[EN IMAGES] Race against time to rescue the inhabitants of devastated Mayotte

A race against time is underway in Mayotte to help the victims of this French archipelago in the Indian Ocean devastated by a deadly cyclone, where water and food are lacking, and to try to find survivors in the rubble of the shanty towns .

The resigning Ministers of the Interior and Overseas, Bruno Retailleau and François-Noël Buffet, are expected late Monday morning in the poorest department in France, where the authorities fear “several hundred” deaths.

But a final assessment will be “very difficult” to establish, because the Muslim tradition, alive in Mayotte, requires that the deceased be buried “within 24 hours”, explained the prefect François-Xavier Bieuville on Sunday.

In addition, the illegal population of the territory exceeds 100,000 people according to the Ministry of the Interior – out of some 320,000 inhabitants officially counted -, making an exhaustive count of the dead improbable.

With wind gusts of more than 220 km/h, Cyclone Chido, the most intense that Mayotte has experienced in 90 years, ravaged the small archipelago on Saturday where around a third of the population lives in precarious housing, totally destroyed.

Huts destroyed, tin roofs blown away, electric poles down, trees uprooted… The residents, who remained confined during the passage of the cyclone, discovered, stunned, scenes of chaos. Across the territory, many roads are impassable and many communications cut.

“It’s carnage. The court, the prefecture, many services, shops, schools are on the ground,” Ousseni Balahachi, a retired nurse, told AFP from Mamoudzou, the Mahorese “capital”. The hospital was flooded and, according to him, risks not being able to treat the many injured in good conditions.

An air and sea bridge was organized from the island of Reunion, a French territory 1,400 km away as the crow flies, to send medical and relief equipment and personnel. A total of 800 civil security personnel are sent as reinforcements, with a field hospital and satellite transmission equipment.

Rescuers expect to find many victims in the rubble of the densely populated shanty towns, particularly in the heights of Mamoudzou, said the city’s mayor Ambdilwahedou Soumaila.

“Lots of cries for help”

Teams “have started working to free access to remote areas”, where “we still hope to find survivors”, added the councilor, who specifies having received “many calls for help”.

Many undocumented immigrants from the slums had not joined the shelters provided by the prefecture, “thinking that it would be a trap being set for them (…) to pick them up and take them outside the borders”, according to former nurse Ousseni Balahachi.

Many victims reached accommodation centers on Sunday, reported Salama Ramia, senator from Mayotte. “But unfortunately there is no water, no electricity, hunger is starting to rise. It is urgent that help arrives, especially when you see children, babies, to whom we have nothing concrete to offer,” the elected official expressed alarm on BFMTV.

“Some of my neighbors are already hungry and thirsty,” also laments Lucas Duchaufour, a physiotherapist living in Labattoir, a town on the island of Petite-Terre. Who notes that all the fruit trees, like the mango trees, have been uprooted.

Residents speak of a climate of insecurity, with scenes of looting in the Kawéni industrial zone in Mamoudzou, as Frédéric Bélanger, 52, reported to AFP.

“We are afraid of being attacked, of being looted,” confided Océane, a nurse at the Mayotte hospital center on BFMTV. Some 1,600 police officers and gendarmes are mobilized on the ground in particular to “avoid looting”, indicated the prefect.

Visiting Corsica on Sunday, Pope Francis said he supported “in spirit” the victims of this “tragedy”. By meeting the head of the Catholic Church at Ajaccio airport, President Emmanuel Macron promised to “act” for the Mahorais.

The President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, assured that the EU was ready to help France “in the days to come”.