Homes reduced to nothing, uprooted trees, impassable roads, an apocalyptic landscape. After Cyclone Chido passed through Mayotte, it is time to assess the damage. The 220 km/h gusts which ravaged the Indian Ocean archipelago on the night of Friday December 13 to Saturday December 14 spared nothing. Three days after the disaster, Mayotte is engaged in a humanitarian race against time, in the hope of finding survivors.
If at present the provisional toll numbers 22 dead and more than 1,400 injured, prefect François-Xavier Bieuville is categorical: this observation is well below reality. “I think there will certainly be several hundred [de victimes]perhaps we will approach a thousand, or even a few thousand, he said Sunday evening on the Mayotte la 1ère chain. But to know the real results, you will have to be patient. According to the president of the National Federation of French Firefighters (FNSPF) Jean-Paul Bosland, “recognition takes time. “We discover the victims gradually,” he argued on LCI. Why the assessment is it so difficult to establish? L’Express explains the reasons for this long census.
Impeded communication
The first obstacle to establishing the balance sheet is logistical. After Chido passed, the roads in Mayotte were impassable, blocked by uprooted trees and the debris of homes. As the archipelago has a total area of 375 km2, medical staff were unable to access the most remote locations. And this until today. This Tuesday, December 17, thanks to clearing operations, 70 to 75% of the departmental and national network managed to be cleared, according to the authorities.
According to this same source, the mobile telephone network remains 80% unavailable, and the healthcare system weakened. “[Il est] very degraded with a hospital which was very damaged and medical centers also inoperable”, declared Monday the Minister of Health, Geneviève Darrieussecq. Knowing that the official report only reports people treated at the Mayotte Hospital Center, that -this has reason to be biased.
More than 100,000 undocumented migrants
Especially since all the victims will probably not be declared. According to the French Council of Muslim Faith, 95% of the Mahorese population is Muslim. And as one of the rites of these believers requires, the burial of the deceased must be carried out within twenty-four hours of death, i.e. before they can be counted. Victims were therefore certainly buried before the authorities became aware of their deaths.
Health reasons can also be cited. Due to the heat of the archipelago, bodies enter a state of decomposition more quickly, requiring sudden burial.
Added to this are the numerous unrecorded families. According to a source close to the authorities interviewed by AFP, Mayotte has “100,000 to 200,000 more people” than its 320,000 inhabitants, “due to illegal immigration”. “These people stayed until the last minute. When they saw the intensity of the phenomenon, they started to panic, looking for somewhere to take refuge. But it was already too late, the metal sheets were starting to crumble. fly away,” Ousseni Balahachi, a retired nurse, told the press agency.
Before the cyclone arrived, residents living in the slums were called to take shelter in one of the 71 emergency accommodation centers. In vain. Many migrants preferred to remain discreet “thinking that it was a trap being set for them […] to pick them up and drive them outside the borders”, continues Ousseni Balahachi. The authorities thus estimate that the debris from the shanty towns camouflages the bodies of many victims. To speed up the search, more than 1,600 members of the police were sent .