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 French 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 ” of deaths, perhaps “a few thousand”.
>> Read also: In Mayotte, the death toll from Cyclone Chido could rise to “several hundred” deaths
A final assessment will be “very difficult” to establish because the Muslim tradition, very anchored in Mayotte, wants the deceased to be buried “within 24 hours”, explained Sunday evening the prefect François-Xavier Bieuville. Emmanuel Macron will chair a meeting at the interministerial crisis center of the Ministry of the Interior on Monday at 6 p.m., the Elysée said.
With wind gusts of more than 220 km/h, Cyclone Chido – the most intense that Mayotte has experienced in 90 years – ravaged the small archipelago on Saturday where around a third of the population lives in precarious housing, totally destroyed.
Slums destroyed
“All the shanty towns are lying flat, which suggests a considerable number of victims,” commented a source close to the authorities. 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”.
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.
The situation in 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.
External content
This external content cannot be displayed because it may collect personal data. To view this content you must authorize the category Social networks.
Accept More info
“We are afraid of being attacked, of being looted,” said 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.
lia with ats
