Saturday December 14. It’s 7 a.m. in Mamoudzou (5 a.m. in Paris) and Mayotte is on purple alert. The arrival of Cyclone Chido is imminent. The prefecture ordered “strict confinement of the entire population, including emergency and security services”. In the Majicavo Koropa district, one of the most disadvantaged in this Indian Ocean archipelago, Fatima is glued to the radio, listening for instructions. “We are very afraid”this 57-year-old mother of three told AFP. Around her, stocks “water, food, candles”. Deep inside her, the fear of seeing her home, which she says “secure”give in to the elements.
It has been three days since apprehension has gripped the department, first placed on hurricane pre-alert on Wednesday, then on orange alert on Friday morning. Usually spared from cyclones, notably due to the natural protection of the neighboring island of Madagascar, Mayotte will face “an unprecedented event, of extreme violence”warned the prefect, François-Xavier Bieuville. The fate of some 100,000 home occupants “not solid” made of sheet metal and wood, almost a third of the population, is of particular concern. To offer them permanent shelter, the authorities have opened several dozen accommodation centers in schools and gymnasiums.
To allow everyone to prepare for the worst, Friday was declared a dead day in schools. Hastily, 110 rescuers and civil security firefighters were dispatched in the afternoon from Reunion to “to preposition” and be able, once the cyclone has passed, to help restore power, free the roads and carry “assistance to disaster-stricken populations”. In the early evening, the airport closed, shortly after maritime service between the two main islands, Grande-Terre and Petite-Terre, was interrupted. Even the tap water was cut off. Everywhere, shrill sounds escaped from the telephones: FR-ALERT message from the prefect to announce the transition to red alert from 10 p.m.
The tone of the authorities seemed alarmist, but the reality is even worse. In Mamoudzou, Saturday morning, a resident describes a storm “completely crazy”. “A tree collapsed on the terrace and I don’t even know if I still have a roof”he confides to West France from his bathtub, where he snuggled under a mattress. In the west, on the other side of Grande-Terre, an inhabitant of M’Tsangamouji, also “refugee in the bathroom”tells the daily how the roof of his house was torn off and claims that his living room was invaded by debris and glass wool. On BFMTV, a local journalist has testified, frightened, since “a closet” of his house, which “flew away”.
In the largest French slum, in Kawéni, “everything was taken away, everything was razed”a homeless survivor laments to AFP. “The slums which housed tens of thousands of people are certainly cemeteries”with victims probably “engulfed by metal sheets and mudslides”alerts the MP for the archipelago Estelle Youssouffa (Liot), from Paris. In the elected official’s own house, although it is solid, the roof has disappeared. His brother, his sister-in-law and their baby “survived under a table for hours in the wind and rain”she confides to BFMTV.
“Our house was solid, that’s what we thought.”
Estelle Youssouffa, Liot MP from Mayotteat BFMTV
Wherever they come from, the testimonies speak of shaking walls, torn metal sheets, flooded houses, fallen banana trees. “The interior of the rooms was vacuumed”says the manager of a hotel north of Mamoudzou, who claims to have “lost everything”. Same observation in another tourist establishment in Petite-Terre: “Almost nothing remains of the hotel”describes a client Figaro. “However, we were reassured by telling us that the building was very recent and up to standard.”
Like a beacon in the night, the journalists of Mayotte la 1ère remain on duty to inform residents, all morning, on the evolution of the situation. Suddenly, at 10:24 a.m., a window opens on the radio and television, in a live broadcast also on Facebook. “We are in danger”alarms a guest on the set. “Isn’t there a safe room here?”he says, amid panicked voices. “Go over there.”we hear, before a long silence in the studio. Nearly an hour later, the show resumes. “We had to change studios for safety reasons, but the whole team is in good health”assures the presenter, before continuing. Because the emergency is elsewhere.
At the Mayotte hospital center, doors and windows burst and water began to rise in the maternity ward, the largest in Europe. “It was as if the cyclone had followed us in the corridors, we tried to find a suitable corridor to shelter the patients, it was total panic, tears, it was very hard between 11:30 a.m. and 2 p.m. was really a scene horror”describes the head of the obstetrics department on franceinfo. As a woman is about to give birth, the flood reaches the operating room. The doctor plans to perform an emergency cesarean section, but ultimately manages to avoid it. “We did everything to give birth”he assures.
Almost no official building can withstand the power of the winds, recorded at 226 km/h at Pamandzi airport, according to Météo-France, while civil security mentions “gust of 260, 270, 280 km/h”. At the edge of the runways, the airport control tower sees its windows blown out by the wind and a vehicle overturns not far from shredded trees. The fire and rescue operational center must be evacuated, according to the firefighters, who are then still under orders to remain confined, despite calls for help from the population. “We fear discovering a catastrophe”let out the firefighters.
The most palpable concern is undoubtedly escaping from emergency accommodation centers. “Part of the roofs are gone” and some sites are taking on water, reports on franceinfo the president of the association of mayors of Mayotte, Madi Madi Souf, who is in Paris. “It’s apocalyptic”he describes. Above all, the centers sound far too hollow: barely 3,500 people took place there before the cyclone hit. Where are the nearly 100,000 other occupants of precarious housing? “People were not aware of the dangerousness of the event”is alarmed by the mayor of Mamoudzou, Ambdilwahedou Soumaila, to the Figaro.
Despite the guarantee provided by the authorities that everyone would be welcomed, even in an irregular situation, many undocumented immigrants living in the slums have not joined the shelters. “thinking that it would be a trap that we were setting for them (…) to pick them up and lead them outside the borders”says the departmental secretary of the CFDT, Ousseni Balahachi, interviewed by AFP. “These people stayed until the last minute. When they saw the intensity of the phenomenon, they started to panic, looking for somewhere to take refuge. But it was already too late, the metal sheets were starting to crumble. fly away.”
At the beginning of the afternoon, the prefecture decided to downgrade the alert level from purple to red, to allow emergency services to intervene. The population must continue to confine themselves in the face of elements still unleashed in the wake of the cyclone, now on their way to the African coast. “Our island is currently being hit by the most violent and destructive cyclone we have experienced since 1934”state services then seriously declare. “Many of us have lost everything.”
On Sunday, Chido left the archipelago, and the red alert was lifted at the end of the afternoon. We must now rescue residents in a devastated territory, where the human toll looks terrible. The prefect said he expected to identify “several hundred” deaths, even “a few thousand”.
