# Cyclone of December 1950 (22–23 December 1950)

URL: https://allhistories.com/comoros/timeline/1950-cyclone-of-december-1950
Location: Mutsamudu, Anjouan
Themes: main-event

Tropical cyclones from the south-west Indian Ocean periodically strike the Comoros, usually between December and April. The islands' housing, largely built of wood, palm thatch and earth, and their food crops of bananas, cassava and rice were highly vulnerable, as earlier storms in 1905 and 1934 had shown. On 22–23 December 1950 a cyclone passed directly through Anjouan and Mohéli. It was the deadliest storm recorded in the archipelago in the twentieth century: 585 people were killed, tens of thousands were injured or affected, and around 40,000 were left homeless. Plantations, food crops, houses and roads were devastated across both islands. The young territorial administration at Dzaoudzi, created only four years earlier, had few resources to respond and depended on aid from France and Madagascar. The disaster struck when the territory's economy was already fragile and population growth was putting pressure on land. Reconstruction absorbed much of the limited development budget of the early 1950s, and the cyclone remained a reference point in local memory as the worst natural catastrophe of the colonial period. At this point in the timeline (22–23 December 1950), the President of the French Republic was Vincent Auriol (16 January 1947 – 16 January 1954); the Acting Administrator-Superior of the Comoros was Roger Rémy (31 December 1948 – December 1950); the Administrator-Superior of the Comoros was Pierre Coudert (December 1950 – 21 April 1956).

## Why it matters
It was the deadliest natural disaster in the Comoros in the twentieth century.

Ruler at the Time: [Vincent Auriol](https://allhistories.com/comoros/rulers/vincent-auriol)

Acting Administrator-Superior of the Comoros: Roger Rémy
Administrator-Superior of the Comoros: Pierre Coudert

## Sources
- [Wikipedia — Tropical cyclones in the Comoros Islands](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tropical_cyclones_in_the_Comoros_Islands)
- [Encyclopaedia Britannica — Comoros cyclone 1950](https://www.britannica.com/search?query=Comoros+cyclone+1950)
- [French Wikipedia — Territoire des Comores](https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Territoire_des_Comores)
- [Wikipedia — Overseas Territory And Autonomy (period overview)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Territory_of_the_Comoros)