Bruno Retailleau fears a “heavy” human toll after Cyclone Chido; an airlift will be deployed from Reunion

Tin houses blown away, electrical poles down, trees uprooted: Cyclone Chido hit Mayotte on Saturday, December 14, now placed on red alert, where barricaded residents, cut off from the world, were hit by devastating winds. Two people died in the Petite-Terre sector, the small island in the archipelago where Pamandzi airport is located, east of Mamoudzou, Agence France-Presse (AFP) learned from a security source.

The Prime Minister, François Bayrou, spoke on the subject on Saturday evening, after an interministerial crisis committee held at the Ministry of the Interior in Paris. “The assessment is not very easy to make”declared Mr. Bayrou, due to the still degraded conditions on site and the difficulty in providing reliable information. “State services are present and mobilized”he added.

Speaking after him, the resigning Minister of the Interior, Bruno Retailleau, said the “total solidarity [du gouvernement] with our Mahorese compatriots ». “Precarious housing has been completely destroyed”he continued, before detailing the actions that will be carried out at the initiative of the authorities: due to the destruction of the control tower of the international airport, only military planes will be authorized to land there ; an airlift organized by the army will be set up from Reunion; a field hospital will be deployed in Mamoudzou, where several services in the hospital center are no longer usable; until Wednesday, 800 civil security personnel will arrive as reinforcements on the archipelago, as well as 210 medical personnel.

Asked about the human toll, Bruno Retailleau declared: “I won’t give any figures because no one is able to know what exactly they are”. “To take stock, we must be able to go into the field, to inspect the rubble, to inspect this precarious habitat which has been totally destroyed. It will only be in a few days, in a few hours”he added, before estimating: “We fear it will be heavy”.

The alert level was lowered from purple to red to allow emergency services to come out, but the prefect called on the approximately 320,000 inhabitants of Mayotte to stay “confined” et “solidarity” In “this ordeal”. Communications with the territory remain very difficult.

Closed until further notice, the airport, where gusts reached 226 km/h according to Météo-France, has “suffered heavy damage, notably the control tower”reported on X the resigning Minister of Transport, François Durovray. “Traffic will initially be restored with military relief aircraft. Ships are engaged to ensure supplies »he added.

The resigning Minister of the Armed Forces, Sébastien Lecornu, stressed that an A400M plane would leave the mainland on Saturday evening with humanitarian freight and civil security resources. It will be accompanied by a frigate and a helicopter. Secours populaire, for its part, launched an appeal for donations.

“The situation is catastrophic”

“Many of us have lost everything”lamented the prefect of the 101st French department, François-Xavier Bieuville, reporting the “the most violent and destructive cyclone we have experienced since 1934”. “The situation is catastrophic”lamented to AFP the president of the association of mayors of this French overseas department, Madi Madi Souf.

More than 15,000 homes are without electricity, tweeted the resigning Minister of Ecological Transition, Agnès Pannier-Runacher. The situation also raises fears of severe water supply difficulties in an archipelago already subject to water cuts.

Technical services were active in the afternoon to clear the roads and allow emergency services to pass, according to the mayor of Mamoudzou, Ambdilwahedou Soumaila. Ibrahim Mcolo, a resident of Chiconi in the west of Grande-Terre, had taken refuge in his family’s concrete house in Kangani, in the north of Grande-Terre. “I see all the neighbors’ metal sheets flying away, cables torn out, the neighbor’s banana tree on the ground. Even in our house which is well protected, water enters. I feel her trembling »he described to AFP in the morning.

“It’s time for urgency”President Emmanuel Macron declared on X, ensuring that “the whole country” was alongside the Mahorais. The new Prime Minister François Bayrou must participate in an interministerial crisis meeting in Paris in the evening, Matignon announced.

The resigning Minister of the Interior Bruno Retailleau announced a new dispatch on Sunday of 140 civil security soldiers and firefighters, bringing the personnel dispatched to the site to 250. Some 1,600 police officers and gendarmes are deployed to help the population and “prevent possible looting”we learned from those around Bruno Retailleau.

According to the Ministry of the Interior, the phase of assessing damage to critical infrastructure (hospital, airport, prefecture, etc.) has begun. During a telephone interview with the prefect of the archipelago, Mr. Retailleau asked “maximum mobilization of law enforcement to help the population and prevent possible looting”.

The cyclone heads towards Mozambique

around 2:30 p.m. local time (12:30 p.m. in Paris), the crisis unit set up at the prefecture had received calls from people “only injured”more “the emergency services have not yet been able to reach the heights of the city”where the most vulnerable residents are located, underlined the mayor of Mamoudzou.

Around 100,000 people living in “unsound dwellings”particularly in tin huts, had been identified in the archipelago by the authorities to be sheltered in more than 70 emergency accommodation centers.

The eye of the intense tropical cyclone passed over the north and northwest of Grande-Terre late in the morning. It then moved away towards the west and the weather conditions became “improved quickly” late afternoon on the archipelago, according to the meteorological services.

Chido will nevertheless remain a cyclone “extremely dangerous over the next 18 to 24 hours”and now threatens the coasts of Mozambique on the African continent. The archipelago had been placed on purple cyclone alert at 5 a.m. local time (3 a.m. in Paris), implying “strict confinement of the entire population”depending on the prefecture. This cyclone carried winds greater, according to the meteorological service, than the intensity of cyclone Kamisy in 1984, which left thousands homeless and affected the population of the territory, today the poorest department in France .

Two of the Comoros islands, Anjouan – the closest to Mayotte – and Mohéli, were also affected, but much less severely. Mosques were flooded, kwasa (boats) swept away by the waves and homes damaged, reported Commander Abderemane Mahmoud of Comorian Civil Security.