Consequences of Cyclone Chido in Mayotte
by Tassilo Hummel
MAMOUDZOU, Mayotte (Reuters) -President Emmanuel Macron visited Mayotte on Thursday, five days after the devastating passage of Cyclone Chido in the French department of the Indian Ocean, where he announced a day of national mourning on December 23 and warned of the “challenges” to be met in the coming weeks and for reconstruction.
Welcomed by a worried and bruised population, the Head of State expressed his caution with regard to the results mentioned at the moment.
“It is likely that there are many more victims” than the 31 officially recorded so far, he told journalists.
Emmanuel Macron confirmed that a field hospital would open on Friday and that 1,200 security forces would be deployed by Sunday, compared to 800 currently.
“First we have the emergency (…) It’s care, trying to repair what can be repaired (…) and that’s getting drinking water and food (…). And there things will accelerate,” he also said.
“Then there is a time of stabilization (…) because, for several weeks, we will be faced with challenges,” he continued. “And then there is the last phase, it is the reconstruction (…) We are going to create a public establishment, rebuild Mayotte”.
THE CYCLONE CAME TO “FINISH THE PEOPLE”
Earlier, via the social network X, the French president announced a day of national mourning on Monday, December 23. “Our flags will be at half-mast. All French people will be invited to worship at 11 a.m..”
“We are a Nation. We all share the pain of the Mahorais,” he added.
Upon his arrival in the 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 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,” declared the Head of State on the social network
He assured that communications would be restored in the coming days.
“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 an epidemic of cholera at the start of the year.
“GRASS GROUNDS”
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 has come to recover the buried bodies,” declared centrist MP Estelle Youssoufa.
Mayotte officially has some 320,000 inhabitants, a number largely underestimated according to the Head of State’s interlocutors for whom aid must be provided 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.
(Reporting by Tassilo Hummel, with contributions from Michel Rose and Bertrand Boucey in Paris, written by Camille Raynaud, Jean-Stéphane Brosse and Jean Terzian, edited by Tangi Salaün and Blandine Hénault)
