Extremely violent winds ravaged the archipelago with electrical poles downed, trees uprooted and sheet metal roofs or partitions blown away in a territory where precarious housing affects at least a third of the population.
Rescue efforts
The resigning Minister of the Interior Bruno Retailleau estimated on Saturday evening after an interministerial crisis meeting that it “will probably take days” to “refine” the human toll. But “we fear that it will be heavy”, he warned, speaking of a “dramatic situation”. He is expected there on Monday with his overseas counterpart, François-Noël Buffet.
The prefect of Reunion, in charge of the defense and security zone of the southern Indian Ocean, held a crisis management meeting on Sunday morning to coordinate relief action. From the start of the week, 162 civil security soldiers and firefighters from France will come to reinforce the 110 prepositioned in the archipelago since Friday.
Air and sea rotations are operational from Sunday to transport medical personnel and equipment. “The inventory of the needs of the emergency services and the populations continues in order to organize rotations, for as long as necessary,” indicates the defense zone prefecture in a press release.
“Everything was razed”
The situation suggests severe water supply difficulties in an archipelago already subject to cuts.
In Kawéni, a neighborhood located in the commune of the Mahoran “capital” Mamoudzou, “everything was taken away, everything was razed,” Mounira, a resident of the largest French slum, complained to AFP on Saturday. the house was destroyed. 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.
Closed until further notice to commercial flights, the airport, where gusts reached 226 km/h according to Météo-France, suffered significant damage, particularly in its control tower. According to explanations to AFP from François Gourand, forecaster at Météo-France, 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 alert level was lowered from purple to red during the day on Saturday 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”.
Around 100,000 people living in “unsound dwellings”, particularly in sheet metal huts, had been identified in the archipelago by the authorities to be sheltered in more than 70 emergency accommodation centers.
