Cyclone Desire –
Race against time to rescue the inhabitants of Mayotte
The French archipelago in the Indian Ocean, devastated by deadly gusts of wind, is trying to find the missing and cope with the lack of water and food.
Published today at 11:57 a.m.
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A race against time is underway in Mayotte to help the victims of this French archipelago in the Indian Ocean devastated by a deadly cyclone. There is a shortage of water and food and the hospital is badly damaged.
The resigning Ministers of the Interior and Overseas Territories Bruno Retailleau and François-Noël Buffet, as well as their Mahorais colleague Thani Mohamed-Soilihi, arrived Monday morning in the poorest department in France, where the authorities fear “several hundred” deaths, perhaps “a few thousand”.
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Affected slums
A final assessment will be “very difficult” to establish because the Muslim tradition, very anchored in Mayotte, requires that the deceased be buried “within 24 hours”, explained the prefect François-Xavier Bieuville on Sunday evening.
“All the shanty towns are lying flat, which suggests a considerable number of victims,” a source close to the authorities commented to AFP. Mayotte officially has 320,000 inhabitants, “but it is estimated that there are 100,000 to 200,000 more people, taking into account illegal immigration,” added this source, who estimates that few inhabitants in irregular situation joined the accommodation centers before the passage of the cyclone, “probably for fear of being controlled”.
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Scenes of chaos
Emmanuel Macron will chair a meeting at the interministerial crisis center of the Ministry of the Interior on Monday at 6:00 p.m., indicated the Elysée With wind gusts of more than 220 km/h, cyclone Chido – the most intense that Mayotte has experienced for 90 years – ravaged on Saturday the small archipelago where around a third of the population lives in precarious housing, completely destroyed.
Chido was probably favored by surface waters close to 30°C in the area, which provides more energy for storms, a global warming phenomenon also observed this fall in the North Atlantic and the Pacific. The impact of the cyclone in Mayotte was especially exceptional because its eye struck the land directly.
Huts destroyed, tin roofs blown away, electrical poles down, trees uprooted… The residents, confined during the passage of the cyclone, discovered, stunned, scenes of chaos. Across the territory, many roads are impassable and many communications cut.
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The situation of the healthcare system is “very degraded with a hospital which has been badly damaged and medical centers which are inoperable”, declared the Minister of Health, Geneviève Darrieussecq. The control tower at Mayotte-Dzaoudzi airport also suffered significant damage. The resumption of commercial flights is not envisaged for “at best ten days”, a prefectural source told AFP on Monday.
Air and sea bridge
An air and sea bridge is deployed from the island of Reunion, a French territory 1,400 km away as the crow flies, to send medical and relief equipment and personnel. A total of 800 civil security personnel, who have a Dash aircraft, are sent as reinforcements, with a field hospital and satellite transmission equipment.
The support system also relies on three aircraft and two military ships, according to the army general staff. Rescuers expect to find many victims in the rubble of the densely populated shanty towns, particularly in the heights of Mamoudzou, said the city’s mayor Ambdilwahedou Soumaila.
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Victims reached the accommodation centers on Sunday, reported Salama Ramia, senator from Mayotte. “But unfortunately there is no water, no electricity, hunger is starting to rise. It is urgent that help arrives, especially when you see children, babies, to whom we have nothing concrete to offer,” the elected official expressed alarm on BFMTV.
“Some of my neighbors are already hungry and thirsty,” also laments Lucas Duchaufour, a physiotherapist living in Labattoir, a town on the island of Petite-Terre. Residents speak of a climate of insecurity, with scenes of looting in the Kawéni industrial zone in Mamoudzou, as Frédéric Bélanger, 52, reported to AFP.
“We are afraid of being attacked, of being looted,” confided Océane, a nurse at the Mayotte hospital center on BFMTV. Some 1,600 police officers and gendarmes are mobilized on the ground in particular to “avoid looting”, according to the prefect.
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ATS/Myrtille Wendling
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