Emmanuel Macron, who visited Mayotte this Thursday five days after the devastating passage of Cyclone Chido, announced that he would decree a day of national mourning on December 23.
“We are a Nation. We all share the pain of the Mahorais”underlines the head of state on X. “I will declare national mourning for this Monday, December 23. Our flags will be at half-mast. All French people will be invited to pay their respects at 11:00 a.m.”he specifies.
The head of state was welcomed by a worried and devastated population in this French department in the Indian Ocean. Upon his arrival Thursday morning at Pamandzi airport, aboard an Airbus A330 carrying four tonnes of food and health freight, then during a visit to the hospital in Mamoudzou, the Mahoran capital, Emmanuel Macron heard the residents deplore the lack of water, electricity, gasoline and other essential services, while aid sent by the State from Reunion Island begins to be distributed. “Please stay, don’t leave too quickly”Pamandzi airport employee Assane Haloi told him in tears. “Give help. Solutions, but solutions that work.”
The Elysée informed the press that the head of state would spend the night in the archipelago and visit other neighborhoods affected by the cyclone on Friday morning. “Mahorais, we will get back together”assured the Head of State on the social network
At the Mamoudzou hospital center, Emmanuel Macron confirmed that a field hospital would be operational on Friday and announced the sending of gendarmerie reinforcements, whose numbers will increase to 1,200 men compared to 800 currently. He also assured that communications would be restored in the coming days.
“Open mass graves”
“Here, we are in the thick of the crisis”a doctor from the intensive care unit told him. “It’s not the straw that breaks the camel’s back, it’s the big cyclone that comes to finish people off”he added, recalling that the archipelago had already had to face a cholera epidemic at the start of the year.
While the head of state flew over the territory, the presidential convoy was booed by residents waiting in front of a gas station on the island of Petite-Terre, one of only three open on the entire island. archipelago. The human toll of the disaster remains unknown at this stage. Only 31 deaths have been confirmed by hospitals but authorities fear hundreds or even thousands of deaths while devastated areas remain inaccessible and heavy rains are expected on Thursday in the north of the territory. “We are facing open-air mass graves […]. No one came to recover the buried bodies.”declared centrist MP Estelle Youssoufa.
Mayotte officially has some 320,000 inhabitants, a number largely underestimated according to interlocutors of the Head of State for whom aid must be planned for half a million people. The government has decreed a six-month freeze on the prices of bottled water and consumer products on the archipelago, where a nighttime curfew was put in place on Tuesday evening in order to prevent looting and violence. The resigning Overseas Minister, François-Noël Buffet, also announced the activation of the “state of natural calamity” in order to enable more rapid and effective management of the crisis and facilitate the implementation of emergency measures. emergency.
