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Cyclone in Mayotte: “dramatic situation”, the toll promises to be “heavy”
At least two deaths, and the fear of a much “heavier” human toll: the “exceptional” tropical cyclone Chido sowed chaos on Saturday in Mayotte, the poorest department in France, in the Indian Ocean, where the precarious housing was completely destroyed. The resigning Minister of the Interior Bruno Retailleau estimated Saturday evening at the end of an interministerial crisis meeting that it “will probably take days” to “refine” the assessment human. But “we fear that it will be heavy”, he warned, speaking of a “dramatic situation”.Mr. Retailleau, who highlighted the “exceptional mobilization” of state services, spoke of “precarious housing completely destroyed” in Mayotte. This habitat concerns at least a third of the population. The resigning minister, who will go to Mayotte where he will arrive on Monday, announced the sending in “five successive waves until Wednesday of reinforcements for civil security”, i.e. approximately “800 people as well as equipment (…) but also medical personnel.” Mayotte was hit hard by extremely violent winds which ravaged the archipelago with electrical poles on the ground, roofs in sheet metal stolen and uprooted trees. – “Everything has been razed” -In Kawéni, a district located in the commune of the Mahorese “capital” Mamoudzou, “everything has been taken away, everything has been razed”, lamented to AFP Mounira, a resident of the largest French slum, whose house was destroyed. Two people died in the Petite-Terre sector, the small island in the archipelago where the airport is located of Pamandzi, east of Mamoudzou, AFP learned from a security source. Closed until further notice to commercial flights, the airport, where gusts reached 226 km/h according to Météo-France, suffered major damage, particularly in its control tower. The resigning Minister of Health, Geneviève Darrieussecq, indicated on the social network “the Mayotte hospital center suffered significant material damage”. The French Red Cross sent reinforcements of personnel to Mayotte from Reunion and France just before confinement, the association of health workers said in a press release. humanitarian aid, fearing “immense needs” and prepositioning reserves of drinking water and food on site. The situation suggests severe water supply difficulties in an archipelago already subject to cuts.More than 15,000 homes were deprived of electricity, according to the resigning Minister of Ecological Transition Agnès Pannier-Runacher. Telephone calls, including emergency ones, have been drastically limited. Secours populaire has launched an appeal for donations to help Mayotte, where more than three-quarters of the approximately 320,000 inhabitants live below the national poverty line. A plane A400M was due to take off from mainland France on Saturday evening with humanitarian cargo and civil security resources, accompanied by a frigate and a helicopter. “Many of us have lost everything”, lamented the prefect of the 101st French department, François-Xavier Bieuville, reporting the “most violent and destructive cyclone we have experienced since 1934”. According to the explanations to AFP from François Gourand, forecaster at Météo-France, the Cyclone Chido is “exceptional” because it directly hit the archipelago, while its power was boosted by particularly warm waters in the Indian Ocean linked to climate change.The level The alert was lowered from purple to red during the day to allow emergency services to come out, but the prefect called on the approximately 320,000 inhabitants of Mayotte to remain “confined” and “in solidarity” in “this ordeal”. Communications with the territory remain very difficult. – “Beginnings of looting” – “The time has come for an emergency,” President Emmanuel Macron declared on X, assuring that “the whole country” was alongside the Mahorais. The resigning Minister of the Interior Bruno Retailleau announced a new dispatch on Sunday of 140 civil security soldiers and firefighters, bringing the personnel dispatched to the site to 250. The technical services were activated in the afternoon to clear the roads and let emergency services pass. Some 1,600 police officers and gendarmes are deployed. “The beginnings of looting” took place, noted Bruno Retailleau, but the police reacted “very quickly”, according to him. Around 100,000 people living in “non-solid dwellings”, notably in sheet metal huts , had been identified in the archipelago by the authorities to be sheltered in more than 70 emergency accommodation centers. The eye of the intense tropical cyclone moved away towards the west and the conditions weather conditions “improved rapidly” at the end of the afternoon on the archipelago, according to the meteorological services. Chido was nevertheless expected to remain an “extremely dangerous” cyclone for many hours, and threatened the coasts of Mozambique on the continent on Saturday evening africain.dje-juc-mca-sc/bfa/bn
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