“We are very afraid”: the inhabitants of Mayotte were preparing on Friday for the passage of Chido, an intense tropical cyclone which has caused the Indian Ocean archipelago to be placed on red alert from 10 p.m. (8 p.m. in Paris) .
“The situation is serious. Mayotte has never experienced such a situation,” declared the president of the departmental council, Ben Issa Ousseni, while the cyclone, currently about 500 km northeast of Mayotte, is in ” intensification phase” according to Météo-France.
“I stocked up on bottles of water, food, candles…” says Fatima, a resident of Majicavo-Koropa and mother of three children, who fears “strong winds” and “storms”.
“We are very afraid,” confides this 57-year-old woman, still marked by the passage of a cyclone when she was a child in the Comoros, “the waves (which) ravaged everything, the electrical poles on the ground”, the “damage everywhere “.
During the night from Friday to Saturday, Météo-France forecasts in Mayotte “violent gusts of wind, intense rain, submersive waves coupled with a rise in the sea”, weather conditions which cause “a risk of runoff and flooding, and a sea swell which can have significant effects on the coastline,” said the prefect of Mayotte, François-Xavier Bieuville.
“This is an unprecedented event, of extreme violence, the winds could exceed 180 km/h,” declared the prefect of the department during a press conference, who ordered the boats to “must reach dry land “.
From 10 p.m., all traffic on public roads will be prohibited on the two islands and Dzaoudzi airport will be closed from 8 p.m. (6 p.m. Paris time). The last barge, which connects Grande-Terre to Petite-Terre, will leave at 5:30 p.m. local time.
The Regional Health Agency asks patients “not to travel but to call 15”, and adds that “medical resources have been reinforced to take care of injured or sick people”.
– 71 accommodation centers –
The prefect called on people housed in precarious housing, very numerous in the poorest department in France, to confine themselves to one of the 71 accommodation centers opened by the authorities.
These centers, located in schools and gymnasiums, “will be open to all,” he assured.
The priority concerns are the 100,000 people living in “unsound housing” which have been identified by the authorities.
Although she now lives in “secure accommodation”, Fatima still remains worried: “We will listen to the radio and do whatever is necessary”, she assures us.
In addition to the broadcast of an SMS alert by the authorities, to warn the population, “municipal police officers went to each village”, indicated the prefect, particularly in difficult-to-access neighborhoods.
“The priority is to keep people safe,” assures the mayor of Chiconi, Madi Ousseni Mohamadi, who is preparing the college in his town – closed Friday and Saturday like all schools in the archipelago – to welcome the population. .
“We left a few mattresses so that people could rest. We put bottles of water and some food,” underlines the mayor of this town which borders the coast. He also deployed agents on the ground to “clear the roadsides of elements that could fly away and cause damage”, such as car wrecks for example.
The Ministry of the Interior announced Thursday the sending to Mayotte of 110 civil security professionals from the island of Reunion.
The Mayotte archipelago, relatively untouched by cyclones, had already been affected by cyclone Belna in 2019, which however did not cause major damage.
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