“I think it is natural that after the astonishment comes the moment of anger,” says Bruno Retailleau

A few days after Emmanuel Macron's visit to Mayotte, swept away by Cyclone Chido on December 14, during which the tenant of the Élysée faced the fury of part of the population accusing him of inaction , Bruno Retailleau declared this Sunday in an interview given to Sunday Newspaper (JDD) «[penser] that it is natural that after astonishment comes the moment of anger”.

The resigning Minister of the Interior, who was traveling in the archipelago last Monday, however reaffirms the full commitment of the State to come to the aid of the Mahorais – the provisional toll stands at 35 dead and 2,500 injured, including 78 seriously, according to the latest figures from Place Beauvau. “Mayotte is France, and I can assure you that France mobilizes considerable civil and military forces”he declares in the columns of the weekly.

“Titanic work”

Concretely, the air bridge erected between the metropolis, Reunion and Mayotte “reached full capacity”. “50 tons of water, food, equipment arrive every day [dans l’archipel]. CMA CGM provided a cargo ship; the civilian companies operating in the area have also made a certain number of planes available (…) It is a titanic job that France is carrying out.explains the minister.

As for the temporality of the delivery of aid – a historic challenge in its scale and complexity – Bruno Retailleau recalls that the main airport of Mayotte still cannot accommodate planes at night, the lighting markings and the tower controls that have been damaged.

1,600,000 liters of water on Monday

“As of the end of this weekend, 90% of the population (320,000 people according to the Ministry of the Interior, Editor's note) will be connected to running water, two days out of three for eight hours via water towers”announces Minister LR. However, six municipalities out of the seventeen in the French department “will not be immediately”. “But we will compensate by distributing bottles of water which arrive en masse, at a rate of more than 30,000 liters per day”adds Bruno Retailleau.

Monday, December 23, a container ship will also deliver 1,600,000 liters of water, announced the minister. Two water production stations restarted by Civil Security and one station installed by Veolia “will ensure from the middle of next week additional production to supply all of the Mahorais”.

“Migratory chaos”

Returning from Mayotte, the resigning minister put on the table the thorny issue of illegal immigration to Mayotte, mainly coming from the neighboring Comoros. The Vendéen had declared on BFMTV that in the future it would be necessary to be “much tougher on” of the former French colony, independent since 1974. Remarks which had earned him the wrath of the left.

“The migratory chaos is the ones from Mahor who talk to me about it: they see that illegal immigration has made everything worse”says the former president of the LR group in the Senate. “If the human toll looks dramatic, it is because we allowed vulnerable populations to pile up in houses made of sheet metal. Those who live there will pay the heaviest price.”he explains to JDD. The Comorians who settle on the French archipelago live mainly in shanty towns, many of them razed by the gusts of wind brought by Cyclone Chido. This illegal population would exceed 100,000 people. “If the State does not resolve the migration problem, then we rebuild on sand”concludes Bruno Retailleau, who calls not to “reproduce the same mistakes” of the past.