The French government has activated the state of “exceptional natural calamity” in Mayotte. This measure aims to ensure “more rapid and effective management of the crisis and facilitate the implementation of emergency measures” on the archipelago ravaged by Cyclone Chido.
This is the first time that this brand new device, specially designed for overseas territories, has been activated.
According to the Ministry of Overseas Territories, it will ensure “more rapid and effective management of the crisis and facilitate the implementation of emergency measures” after the deadly passage of the cyclone in the poorest department in France, where a third of the population lives in precarious housing.
With an initial duration of one month, the system can be renewed for periods of two months, and “allows greater responsiveness to local and national authorities, while reducing certain administrative procedures”, indicated the ministry in a press release.
>> Read also: Curfew imposed in Mayotte, where a provisional report shows twenty deaths
Winds over 220 km/h
Cyclone Chido, the most intense that Mayotte has experienced in 90 years with winds of more than 220 km/h, hit the archipelago on December 14. According to a provisional report from the Ministry of the Interior, it left 31 dead and 1,373 injured, even if the authorities anticipate a much higher number of victims.
On the archipelago with its disfigured landscape, the inhabitants of the precarious neighborhoods of the capital Mamoudzou try with the means at hand to patch up what can be, by hammering the sheet metal or putting makeshift roofs on their homes blown away by the wind.
Further away, bulldozers are working to restore the heliport of the Mayotte hospital center (CHM), which was hard hit but which continues to operate.
Food distribution
Thursday, Emmanuel Macron will go to the bedside of patients but also caregivers of the CHM, before going to a “destroyed neighborhood”, announced the Elysée. The Head of State is taking rescue workers as well as four tonnes of food and health cargo on his plane.
“The tragedy of Mayotte is probably the most serious natural disaster in the history of France for several centuries,” wrote Prime Minister François Bayrou in a letter addressed to political forces on Wednesday.
More than 100 tonnes of food were to be distributed on Wednesday, according to the resigning Minister of the Interior Bruno Retailleau.
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