Cyclone Chido: Emmanuel Macron announces that he will travel to Mayotte “in the next few days” and declare “national mourning”

Emmanuel Macron announced on Monday evening that he will travel “to Mayotte in the coming days to support” the people affected by the deadly passage of Cyclone Chido, “the public officials and the mobilized relief forces”.

This evening, during the meeting of the Inter-Ministerial Crisis Unit, I ensured that all emergency measures were adopted to come to the aid of the inhabitants of Mayotte and that the continuity of the State was ensured.

I’ll go to Mayotte…

— Emmanuel Macron (@EmmanuelMacron) December 16, 2024

“It’s about addressing emergencies and starting to prepare for the future,” the president said on X after a Cabinet crisis meeting. “Faced with this tragedy that shocks each of us, I will declare national mourning,” he added.

The head of state chaired a meeting in the early evening at the interministerial crisis center of the Interior Ministry.

A difficult budget

Destroyed shantytowns, a bloodless population, interrupted telecommunications: everything is missing in Mayotte and the emergency services are organizing themselves to find survivors among the rubble. “The island is completely devastated. Precarious housing, shantytowns, nothing remains of them”, declared the outgoing Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau on Monday evening, returning to Reunion after a visit “to the heart of the disaster” in Mayotte, together in particular with his overseas colleague François -Noël Buffet.

The authorities fear “several hundred” deaths, perhaps “a few thousand”, but Retailleau refused to make any “prognosis”, stressing that “it will take days and days” before having a real toll.

The count is complicated by the fact that Mayotte is a land with a strong Muslim tradition and that, according to Islamic rites, many of the deceased were probably buried within 24 hours of death. For now the authorities officially count 21 deaths in hospital and the local prefect has launched a “search mission for the dead”.

Mayotte officially has 320,000 inhabitants, “but it is estimated that there are 100,000 to 200,000 more people, taking illegal immigration into account”, adds this source, who estimates that few inhabitants in an irregular situation joined the reception centers before the cyclone hit, “probably for fear of being controlled”.

“Vital needs”

The priority, Bruno Retailleau insisted on Monday evening, is to satisfy “vital needs” in “water and food”. In this regard, 50% of running water will be restored within 48 hours, its services assure.

In the evening, the Socialist Party had called a day of national mourning in solidarity with the inhabitants and asked the government to trigger a “state of exceptional natural disaster”.

#Mayotte : we ask for the urgent activation of the state of exceptional natural disaster, the mobilization of European emergency funds and a day of national mourning. pic.twitter.com/FOUlHk4aU5

— Socialist Party (@partisocialiste) December 16, 2024

“Mayotte is France. And this catastrophe, of which everything suggests that the human toll, still uncertain, will be very heavy, is a national tragedy that has hit the poorest and most vulnerable territory of the Republic”, underlines the pink party.