Days after Cyclone Chido hit the French Indian Ocean territory of Mayotte, residents are still struggling to access water and food, as rescuers race to find those missing.

The cyclone devastated entire neighbourhoods and killed at least 31 people, according to France’s interior ministry.

Among the damaged and destroyed homes in Mayotte’s capital, Mamoudzou, people lined up with jugs to get water or waited to charge their phones.

On Thursday morning, French President Emmanuel Macron arrived in Mayotte to assess the devastation wrought by the cyclone.

His visit to the French overseas territory comes after Paris declared “exceptional natural disaster” measures for Mayotte late on Wednesday night to enable swifter and “more effective management of the crisis”.

Officials have warned that the death toll from the most destructive cyclone in living memory could reach hundreds, possibly thousands, as rescuers race to clear debris and comb through flattened shantytowns to search for survivors.

“The tragedy of Mayotte is probably the worst natural disaster in the past several centuries of French history,” Prime Minister Francois Bayrou said.

Located near Madagascar off the coast of southeastern Africa, Mayotte is France’s poorest region. An estimated one-third of Mayotte’s population lives in shantytowns whose flimsy, sheet metal-roofed homes offered scant protection from the storm.

Cyclone Chido – which hit Mayotte on Saturday – was the latest in a string of storms worldwide fuelled by climate change, according to meteorologists.

Experts say seasonal storms are being supercharged by warmer Indian Ocean waters, fuelling faster, more destructive winds.

At Mamoudzou’s Mayotte Central Hospital, windows were blown out and doors ripped from hinges, but most of the medics had taken to sleeping at their battered workplace on Wednesday as Chido had swept their homes away.

“It’s chaos,” said medical and administrative assistant Anrifia Ali Hamadi. “The roof is collapsing. We’re not very safe. Even I don’t feel safe here.”