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Situation still very difficult in Mayotte, where help arrives and life resumes
Life resumes as best it can on Wednesday in Mayotte, which comes out of 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 Thursday. According to provisional official figures, the cyclone left 22 dead and 1,373 injured, even if the authorities fear a much heavier toll in the poorest department in France, where relief efforts are underway four days after the disaster. natural.On the archipelago with its disfigured landscape, the inhabitants of the precarious neighborhoods of the capital Mamoudzou try on Wednesday with the means at hand to tinker with what can be done, by hammering the sheet metal or putting a makeshift roof on their homes blown 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. “Little by little, we are reintegrating services as we manage to clean them,” explains the director of the CHM, Jean-Mathieu Defour, to AFP. To alleviate the emergency, more than 100 tons of water and of food must be distributed during the day, assured Wednesday the resigning Minister of the Interior Bruno Retailleau. – “Millions of liters of water” – “We are moving to the massive phase of support for Mayotte”, declared Patrice Latron, the prefect of Reunion Island, from where the authorities launched a “civil maritime bridge” on Wednesday which will start overnight with the departure of some 200 containers expected on Sunday on the battered archipelago. Among this load, “88 water containers”, which represents “millions of liters of water”, as fears of shortages emerge. Cyclone Chido, the most intense that Mayotte has experienced in 90 years, devastated the territory of the Indian Ocean, where around a third of the population lives in precarious housing, completely destroyed. Cyclones usually develop in the Indian Ocean from November to March. This year, surface waters were close to 30°C in the area, which provides more energy to storms, a phenomenon linked to global warming also observed this fall in the North Atlantic and the Pacific. In Mayotte, a field hospital with around a hundred medical beds will be set up “by the end of the week” or “the beginning of next week” to “relieve” the CHM, announced François-Noël Buffet, minister resigned from Overseas. – Macron then Bayrou -President Emmanuel Macron, who promised on Monday to decree “national mourning”, is expected there on Thursday. Its new Prime Minister François Bayrou, criticized for having favored the municipal council of Pau on Monday in the midst of the Mahoran crisis, will go there once his government is formed. “I have never seen a catastrophe of this magnitude on national soil. I think of the children who saw their houses blown up, whose schools were almost all destroyed,” he reacted Tuesday evening. In addition to the question of reconstruction, establishing a human toll is one of the priorities authorities. Bruno Retailleau “gave instructions” to dispatch gendarmes to the field to establish this macabre count, made all the more delicate as the neighboring archipelago of the Comoros is a land of strong Muslim tradition: according to the rites of Islam, the deceased must be buried as quickly as possible. More than 100,000 inhabitants, notably irregular immigrants from the Comoros, live in precarious Mahorais housing. Bruno Retailleau reiterated on Wednesday its intention to legislate against illegal immigration. “We have left the Mahorais alone in the face of their misfortune, with this immigration which is completely uncontrolled,” he lamented. Before promising to be “much tougher with the Comoros” who, according to him, “are pushing populations towards Mayotte to create a form of clandestine occupation.”- Reconstruction -To avoid looting, a curfew has been in place since Tuesday evening from 10 p.m. to 4 a.m. Some 2,000 members of the police are or will be mobilized. We must be able to “ensure public order so as not to add disorder to disorder”, also declared Bruno Retailleau, regretting that two gendarmes were “injured by projectiles last night.” Another priority: ensuring vital needs for water and food. The water supply “is functioning at 50%” François-Noël Buffet said on Wednesday, but it presents a risk of “poor quality”. Electricity is only “partially back on”. The situation is more favorable on the roads, now “cleared” except in the north of Grande-Terre, which was to be cleared on Wednesday, according to Mr. Buffet. Tents and tarpaulins are also expected to restore habitats swept by winds which reached more than 220 km/h. An interministerial delegate will be appointed specifically to “anticipate the reconstruction phase”, he said. assured Bruno Retailleau.Matignon also announced that donations of up to 1,000 euros for Mayotte would entitle them to a tax reduction equal to 75% of the amount paid until May, compared to generally 66% in normal times. bur-tbm-sia-brk-sha/bfa/dch
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