Tropical storm Dikeledi approached Mayotte during the night from Saturday to Sunday.
AFP
Downpours fell on Mayotte on Sunday, causing flooding, while tropical storm Dikeledi begins to move away from the archipelago after killing three people in Madagascar, less than a month after the devastation of Chido in the Indian Ocean.
At 1:36 p.m. Swiss time, the tropical storm was 160 km south of Mayotte, Météo-France indicated in its latest situation update. At its closest, Dikeledi passed about 100 km south of French territory early Sunday.
“It is now moving away (…) continuing its route towards the West-South-West,” specifies Météo-France.
Rain and gusts
On the archipelago, rain and wind intensified in the morning. Météo-France had warned of “very heavy rain which could cause flash floods, floods and landslides”, as well as “gusts which could reach 80 to 90 km/h”.
The Mayotte-La 1ère channel broadcast images of the village of Mbouini (south) “completely flooded and devastated”. In Hamouro (east), the ravines were in flood and in Ouangani (center), torrents of water surged through the streets. Rain falling “torrentially” was reported in Pamandzi, in the south of the island of Petite-Terre.
The intensity of the phenomenon is now decreasing: “The worst part of the rain is decreasing, we still have wind, with strong gusts which make the metal sheets sing,” testifies Gilles Mounier, a resident of Kawéni (north ) aged 55, contacted by telephone by AFP.
“We had a lot of water and my neighbor upstairs no longer has a roof, the tarpaulin blew away with the wind so his apartment is flooded and it is leaking into my house,” laments the IT executive.
Deadly passage to Madagascar
In Madagascar, hit by torrential rains, three people died and at least 920 people were affected in the north of the island.
The population of Mayotte, which has 320,000 inhabitants, has been confined since Saturday evening with a ban on travel until further notice, the archipelago having been placed under red cyclone alert since Saturday evening.
The prefecture reminded the population on Sunday morning on X to respect this confinement: “The event is in progress (…) The few localized lulls are only temporary, the danger for the population persists”.
Throughout the duration of the alert, all traffic is prohibited except for emergency services and authorized people.
“have”
Eighty emergency accommodation centers (schools, MJC, mosques, etc.), set up in all the municipalities of the archipelago, accommodate some 14,500 people, according to the prefecture.
The population was called upon to stock up on water and food to “stand out through the cyclone,” urged the prefecture.
After reaching the northeast coast of Madagascar on Saturday afternoon, the cyclone began to weaken and was downgraded to the stage of a strong tropical storm, with gusts reaching 130 km/h at sea, according to Météo-France. .
Dikeledi “should intensify slowly in the next 24 hours to the stage of tropical cyclone while approaching the Mozambican coast before curving its trajectory towards the south,” indicates Météo-France.
According to their current forecasts, the storm should not make landfall in Mozambique, “but the Nampula region should still experience very degraded conditions”.
Chido caused colossal damage, leaving at least 39 dead and more than 5,600 injured, destroying many precarious and permanent dwellings of the 101st French department.
(AFP)
