LIVE – Cyclone in Mayotte: “dramatic situation”, the toll promises to be “heavy”

The “exceptional” tropical cyclone Chido wreaked havoc on Saturday in Mayotte, the poorest department in France, in the Indian Ocean, where precarious housing was completely destroyed. The resigning Minister of the Interior Bruno Retailleau estimated on Saturday evening after an interministerial crisis meeting that it “will probably take days” to “refine” the human toll. But “we fear that it will be heavy”, he warned, speaking of a “dramatic situation”. Follow the situation live

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Mr. Retailleau, who highlighted the “exceptional mobilization” of State services, spoke of “precarious housing completely destroyed” in Mayotte. This habitat concerns at least a third of the population. The resigning minister, who will go to Mayotte where he will arrive on Monday, announced the sending in “five successive waves until Wednesday of reinforcements for civil security”, or around “800 people as well as equipment (… ) but also medical personnel.

Mayotte was hit hard by extremely violent winds which ravaged the archipelago with downed electricity poles, blown away tin roofs and uprooted trees.

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“Everything has been razed”, gusts at 226 km/h

In Kawéni, a neighborhood located in the commune of the Mahoran “capital” Mamoudzou, “everything was taken away, everything was razed”, Mounira, a resident of the largest French slum, lamented to AFP. house was destroyed. Two people died in the Petite-Terre sector, the small island in the archipelago where Pamandzi airport is located, east of Mamoudzou, AFP learned from a security source.

Closed until further notice to commercial flights, the airport, where gusts reached 226 km/h according to Météo-France, suffered significant damage, particularly in its control tower. The resigning Minister of Health, Geneviève Darrieussecq, indicated on the social network materials”.

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The French Red Cross sent reinforcements of personnel to Mayotte from Reunion and France just before confinement, the humanitarian aid association said in a press release, fearing “immense needs” and prepositioning reserves of drinking water and food on site. The situation suggests severe water supply difficulties in an archipelago already subject to cuts.

More than 15,000 homes without electricity

More than 15,000 homes were deprived of electricity, according to the resigning Minister of Ecological Transition Agnès Pannier-Runacher. Telephone calls, including emergency ones, have been drastically limited. Secours populaire has launched an appeal for donations to help Mayotte, where more than three quarters of the approximately 320,000 inhabitants live below the national poverty line.

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An A400M plane was due to take off from mainland France on Saturday evening with humanitarian cargo and civil security resources, accompanied by a frigate and a helicopter. “Many of us have lost everything,” lamented the prefect of the 101st French department, François-Xavier Bieuville, reporting the “most violent and destructive cyclone we have experienced since 1934.”

According to explanations to AFP from François Gourand, forecaster at Météo-France, Cyclone Chido is “exceptional” because it directly hit the archipelago, while its power was boosted by particularly warm waters in the Indian Ocean. linked to climate change.

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

“Beginnings of looting”

“The time has come for an emergency,” declared President Emmanuel Macron on X, assuring that “the whole country” was alongside the Mahorais. 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.

The technical services were activated in the afternoon to clear the roads and allow emergency services to pass. Some 1,600 police officers and gendarmes are deployed. “The beginnings of looting” took place, noted Bruno Retailleau, but the police reacted “very quickly”, according to him.

Around 100,000 people living in “unsound housing”, particularly in sheet metal 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 moved away to the west and weather conditions “improved rapidly” late in the afternoon on the archipelago, according to the meteorological services.

Chido was nevertheless expected to remain an “extremely dangerous” cyclone for many hours, and threatened the coasts of Mozambique on the African continent on Saturday evening.