“Mayotte is unrecognizable,” laments Mayotte MP Estelle Youssouffa

“Decapitated trees”, “razed shanty towns”, “heavy silence”… The island’s elected official Liot describes an “apocalytic” landscape on France Inter.

“Mayotte is unrecognizable”, reports Tuesday, December 17 on France Inter Estelle Youssouffa, Liot MP for the 1st constituency of Mayotte, three days after the passage of Cyclone Chido on the archipelago. The elected official, who is on site, ensures that “90 % of permanent houses have lost their roof”.

It depicts an apocalyptic landscape: “There is not a single leaf left on the trees which have all been decapitated”and confirms that “the slums have been completely razed”in the town of Mamoudzou. The MP also describes a heavy silence that reigns on the island. “What is very hard is to see the silence and to see so few people outside.”

“It’s more than destruction.”laments Estelle Youssouffa, “the populations are very small compared to our usual population. These are areas in the North which are very densely populated, which are normally teeming with life. And there, in fact there is almost no traffic, there is no 'There's no one in the streets.' She adds to this that there is “more public lighting” in the streets, making it night “very black”.

Regarding the balance sheet “real” those missing in the mudslides, “we will never know”according to the MP, “since it is a population in an irregular, clandestine situation”, which is not declared to local authorities. She also mentions the impossibility of counting the number of missing children. “One way that was considered was that once school returned, we would count the absentees, but the schools are almost all destroyed.”

Finally, Estelle Youssouffa pleads for the establishment of a state of emergency in Mayotte, in the face of the looting which has already started. Looting of “houses that have been destroyed, where we will steal the metal sheets and goods to rebuild in the illegal slums”she denounces. She also mentions “rockings and gang attacks in which caregivers, who came to help Mayotte, were caught.” “We cannot allow anarchy to take hold”insists the member for Mayotte.