In Mayotte, 35 deaths and 2,500 injured have so far been counted by the French Ministry of the Interior, after the passage of Cyclone Chido which devastated the archipelago. While the actual number of victims could be much higher, many questions remain as to what could have caused such a tragedy.
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“The cyclone is not me!” »exclaimed Emmanuel Macron during his trip to Mayotte, a few days after Chido’s deadly visit to the Indian Ocean archipelago. Taken to task by Mahorais exasperated by the slowness of relief, the head of state seemed to blame the tragedy and its results solely on the meteorological event.
It appears, however, that Mayotte was particularly vulnerable to such an event and that it was foreseeable. Certainly, the cyclone’s winds blew in gusts of more than 220 km/h and these phenomena are rare on the archipelago. Chido, however, was not of extreme intensity, and if they are not frequent, these storms are not unprecedented in Mayotte.
As Magali Reghezza, specialist in natural risks and territorial vulnerability at the École Normale Supérieure, explains in a post published on the Bon Pote websitescience has long known how to uncover the social and territorial determinants of disasters. “This explains, for example, that the consequences of hurricanes Chido and Irma in 2017 were different: 11 deaths in the French West Indies compared to potentially several thousand in Mayotte. However, compared to Irma, Chido is a “small” cyclone: 220 km/h compared to 320 km/h for Irma. »
Mayotte is in fact, by far, much poorer than Saint-Barthélémy was during Irma. The 101st French department is also the poorest, and a large part of its residents are in an irregular situation, living in slums which are very vulnerable to this type of event.
Pre-existing crises
Additionally, many crises pre-existed Chido on the archipelago, such as repeated and persistent droughts, as well as a lack of investment in infrastructure. Hospitals and schools, transport network were already undersized before Chido. This initial situation makes current relief operations all the more complicated.
This underinvestment also concerns infrastructure supposed to be adapted to extreme climatic events. The French government has a special green fund for overseas territories. It is used, for example, to reinforce buildings against cyclones or hurricanes. At the end of 2023, 1.3 million euros had been disbursed from this fund, intended for projects in Martinique, Guadeloupe or Reunion, but none in Guyana or Mayotte.
To this precariousness of assets, was added social precariousness: Météo-France correctly anticipated the trajectory of the cyclone and its scale. Alert bulletins were issued in advance. But this information did not sufficiently reach the most vulnerable populations, especially since Mayotte did not have dedicated evacuation centers. Moreover, several sources report that many undocumented migrants did not want to go to shelters, for fear of falling into a trap, being arrested and deported. Many factors pre-existed the passage of Chido, which made the catastrophe predictable. This one “always results from the combination between a physical phenomenon, called a hazard, and a situation of exposure and vulnerability”writes Magali Reghezza.
Thus, if the Chido hazard is natural, boosted or not by global warming, the catastrophe which results from its passage is indeed the result of social determinants and choices made over several decades in Mayotte.
Also readMayotte: the island still facing a shortage of water and fuel after the passage of Cyclone Chido