Devastated Mayotte awaits the arrival this Thursday of Emmanuel Macron

Emmanuel Macron is due to arrive in Mayotte on Thursday morning, five days after the deadly and devastating passage of Cyclone Chido, to see the extent of the disaster and provide support to the Mahorais, who are nevertheless trying to resume their lives.

The head of state is expected around 10:30 a.m. local time, after a second night under curfew to ensure security and avoid looting. He must spend part of the day in the French archipelago in the Indian Ocean.

While a presidential visit mobilizes large numbers of law enforcement and administration personnel, at the risk of monopolizing the necessary resources elsewhere, the Elysée wanted to make it known that he is going to the overseas department “with a very restricted delegation”.

Objective: to transport four tonnes of food and health aid to the Head of State’s plane, as well as rescuers “who come to lend a hand to their comrades already involved with the Mahorais”, explained the president on X at the time to fly out Wednesday evening.

After an “aerial reconnaissance of the affected territory”, Emmanuel Macron will go to the Mamoudzou hospital center (CHM), according to a program broadcast on Wednesday. “At the end, he will speak with the nursing staff and the patients in his care.”

According to provisional figures, 31 deaths and some 1,400 injured have been officially recorded, but the authorities fear a much higher toll in the poorest department in France. The prefect therefore launched “a mission to search for the dead”, according to the Ministry of the Interior which emphasizes that “70% of the inhabitants were seriously affected”.

Windows blown out, services flooded and equipment destroyed: at the CHM, on a hill overlooking the capital of Mayotte, the president will be able to see with his own eyes the scars of the cyclone.

In the corridors of the pathological pregnancy department of the largest maternity ward in France, electricians were busy on Wednesday repairing rooms to the virtual indifference of caregivers and future mothers.

“The hospital suffered major damage, but it continued to operate despite the difficulties,” underlines its director Jean-Mathieu Defour.

Emmanuel Macron will then go “to a destroyed neighborhood, in contact with the emergency services” mobilized since the most intense cyclone to hit Mayotte in 90 years.

The overseas territory was ravaged by winds of more than 220 km/h, destroying the most disadvantaged neighborhoods.

“It was like a steamroller that crushed everything,” describes Nasrine, a Mahorese teacher who does not give her name, while showing people around her neighborhood of La Vigie, in the commune of Pamandzi.

Thanks to mutual aid and resourcefulness, the landscape of desolation from the beginning has already changed.

But in the most affected neighborhoods, like Kawéni, the largest slum in France on the outskirts of Mamoudzou, there is a strong risk of seeing precarious housing, often made of sheet metal, being reconstructed identically in a hurry to make facing the upcoming rainy season.

The Ministry of Overseas Territories announced Wednesday evening in a press release the activation of the “state of exceptional natural calamity”, supposed to “enable more rapid and effective management of the crisis and facilitate the implementation of emergency measures “.

A third of the population, or more than 100,000 inhabitants, notably illegal immigrants from the neighboring Comoros, live in precarious Mahorais housing.

Aid has started to arrive in the archipelago, where supply challenges are immense, particularly in water and basic necessities.

As of Wednesday, more than 100 tons of food were to be distributed.

“We are moving on to the massive phase of support for Mayotte,” also declared Patrice Latron, the prefect of Reunion, the island from where the authorities launched a “civil maritime bridge” which was to start during the night from Wednesday to Thursday with the departure of some 200 containers expected on Sunday on the archipelago.

Finally, the President of the Republic must “discuss the situation of the island with elected officials”, before leaving for Djibouti, where he must share on Friday, as initially planned, the traditional Christmas meal with the French soldiers deployed there. ‘stranger.

Emmanuel Macron should specify the “national mourning” that he intends to decree, and begin to outline the titanic reconstruction project.

His Prime Minister François Bayrou, criticized for having favored the municipal council of his town of Pau on Monday in the midst of the Mahoran crisis, has since assured that he would also go there after the head of state, and once he will have composed his government, “to mobilize all the means of the State”. He spoke on Wednesday of “the most serious natural disaster in the history of France for several centuries”.