While help continues to arrive in Mayotte on Wednesday, December 18 after the destructive passage of Cyclone Chido, satellite images make it possible to quantify the damage. According to the first analyzes of the European Copernicus Emergency Program, 56% of the buildings analyzed via photographs from space were destroyed or damaged in the northeast of the archipelago. This figure rises to 70% if we add buildings “possibly damaged”according to these analyses.
The European Copernicus program launched emergency monitoring of the consequences of Cyclone Chido on Friday. By analyzing recent satellite images of Mayotte, its engineers are able to quantify the number of buildings, roads and other infrastructure affected by the disaster.
The first analyses, published Monday, currently only cover the north-east of the archipelago, and in particular the town of Mamoudzou and its neighboring towns, on the island of Grande-Terre, as shown in the map below. below.
The objective of these analyzes is to “size the damage and direct relief to the most affected areas”especially when the land is difficult to access, explains to France 2 Jérôme Maxant, engineer at Regional image processing and remote sensing service (Sertit) and expert on the subject. Looking through these maps, we see that the consequences of the disaster are unprecedented: more than half of the buildings in the areas studied are destroyed or damaged.
In the town of Mamoudzou, prefecture of the Mayotte department, 54% of buildings are affected. This figure rises to 80% when we count buildings “possibly damaged”. According to the Copernicus analysis, 23 of the 71 educational establishments are destroyed or damaged, as are 34 of the 49 supermarkets analyzed. The map below shows entire neighborhoods destroyed (in red) or damaged (in orange).
A few kilometers further north, the town of Koungou is also particularly affected. According to the first analyzes by Copernicus, 83% of buildings are destroyed or damaged, and the damage concerns 93% of buildings, including those classified as “possibly damaged”. Entire neighborhoods, located on the seafront or made up of makeshift homes, have been devastated: these are the areas in red or orange in the image below.
The European Copernicus program should continue its analyzes and extend them to other areas of Mayotte, thus making it possible to obtain a global vision of the destruction due to Cyclone Chido. According to a still provisional official report, the disaster left 22 dead and 1,373 injured. The authorities actually fear “several hundred” dead, maybe even “a few thousand”, in this poorest department in France where significant relief is in action, four days after the disaster.
