Mayotte was just emerging Wednesday morning from a first night under curfew, put in place to ensure security and avoid looting after the deadly passage of Cyclone Chido in the archipelago, where Emmanuel Macron is expected on Thursday.
The head of state, who announced on Monday that he would go there in the coming days, “will be in Mayotte on Thursday”, the Elysée announced on Tuesday evening. The new Prime Minister François Bayrou, under fire for having favored the municipal council of Pau on Monday in the midst of the Mahoran crisis, will follow suit as soon as “(his) government is formed”, in order to “mobilize all resources of the State”, he said on France 2.
The situation remains very difficult in the archipelago, where according to a still very provisional assessment the passage of Cyclone Chido left 22 dead and 1,373 injured, according to figures communicated by the Ministry of the Interior. “I have never seen a disaster of this magnitude on national soil. I think of the children who saw their houses blown up, whose schools were almost all destroyed and whose parents are madly anguished,” said François Bayrou still on France 2.
The authorities fear “several hundred” deaths, perhaps even “a few thousand” in the poorest department in France. The count is all the more complicated because Mayotte is a land with a strong Muslim tradition and, according to Islamic rites, the deceased must be buried as quickly as possible. “70% of the inhabitants have been seriously affected”, underlined Bruno Retailleau, resigning Minister of the Interior, announcing the arrival “in the coming days” of 400 additional gendarmes to lend a hand to the 1,600 gendarmes and police present on the site. archipelago.
Cyclone Chido, the most intense that Mayotte has experienced in 90 years, ravaged the Indian Ocean territory on Saturday, where around a third of the population lives in precarious housing, completely destroyed. Cyclones usually develop in the Indian Ocean from November to March, but this year surface waters were close to 30°C in the area, providing more energy for storms, a phenomenon linked to observed global warming also this fall in the North Atlantic and the Pacific. It also killed at least 34 people in Mozambique, injured more than 300 and destroyed more than 20,000 houses, the National Institute for Risk and Disaster Management announced on Tuesday.
“General shortage”
Trees uprooted, debris littering the hills as far as the eye can see, boats piled up: on Petite-Terre, the decor is apocalyptic more than three days after the cyclone hit. “It was like a steamroller that crushed everything,” describes Nasrine, a Mahorese teacher who does not give her name, while showing people around the informal neighborhood of La Vigie, in the commune of Pamandzi, which was razed to the ground. “Everyone is rushing to the stores for water. There is a general shortage,” says Ali Ahmidi Youssouf, a 39-year-old Comorian who walks on the road with a few bottles in his hand.
To avoid this looting and ensure the safety of residents, a curfew was introduced for the entire archipelago from Tuesday evening, from 10 p.m. to 4 a.m. The priority is to ensure the “vital needs” of residents in terms of water and food, Bruno Retailleau insisted on Monday.
Calls for solidarity
Some 120 tonnes of food are to be distributed on Wednesday on the two Mahoran islands, according to the authorities.
On the archipelago, the first medical desert in France, the only hospital, badly damaged, has regained “some 50%” of its activity, indicated François Bayrou during the question session with the government on Tuesday, and will be supported by a hospital campaign starting Thursday.
On the military side, an A400M transport plane shuttles Réunion-Mayotte for possible evacuations of vulnerable people and a second A400M provides a direct connection from mainland France to Mayotte, we learned from the army headquarters. . The Overseas Support and Assistance Vessel (BSAOM) Champlain, which set sail from Reunion Island, is due to arrive in Mayotte on Thursday morning with 180 tonnes of freight on board, according to the same source.
Another priority for the authorities is sending tents and tarpaulins to restore habitats that have been completely destroyed or whose roofs have been torn off by wind gusts that reached more than 220 km/h. In an emergency to find a roof over their heads, many residents have already started clearing and rebuilding without waiting for help. In Mamoudzou, the capital, where emergency services expect to find many victims in the rubble of the highly populated shanty towns, the town hall on Monday called on its adults and residents in “good physical condition” to “strengthen the teams on the ground” .
Calls for solidarity have multiplied in France and abroad. “We are going to launch a call for projects so that architects, architecture students and large companies can propose models that can be assembled immediately,” announced the Prime Minister.
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