Mamoudzou, Mayotte (AP) — French President Emmanuel Macron visited the Indian Ocean archipelago of Mayotte on Thursday to assess the devastation caused by Cyclone Chido in French territory as thousands of people tried to live without basic needs such as water or electricity.
“Mayotte is demolished,” an airport security agent told Macron as soon as he got off the plane.
Security guard Assane Haloi said his relatives, including young children, are without water or power and have nowhere to go after the strongest cyclone in nearly a century swept through France’s Mayotte off the coast of Africa on Sunday. Saturday.
“There is no ceiling, there is nothing. There is no water, no food, no electricity. We can’t even shelter ourselves, we are all rainy with our children, covering ourselves with everything we have to be in to sleep,” he said, asking. for emergency help.
Macron took a helicopter tour of the injured and will spend Thursday night in the remote French territory. After flying over the destruction, he went to the hospital in Mamoudzou, the capital of Mayotte, to meet with medical staff and patients.
Dressed in a classic Mayotte shawl over his white blouse and tie, with his sleeves rolled up to his elbows, the French president listened to others calling for help. A medical staff member explained that some other people had not had water for 48 hours.
Some citizens also expressed anguish over not knowing who had died or were still missing, in part due to the Muslim practice of burying the dead within 24 hours.
“We are facing open-air mass graves,” Mayotte MP Estelle Youssoufa told the press. “There are no lifeguards, no one has gone to the buried bodies. “
Some survivors and humanitarian teams described hurried burials and the stench of bodies.
Macron stated that many of the deceased have not been reported. He said the phone will be repaired “in the coming days” so that other people can report their loved ones missing.
The French government said at least 31 other people were killed and more than 1,500 injured, more than 200 of them seriously. But hundreds, if not thousands, of others are feared to have died in total.
Abdou Houmadou, 27, said emergency aid was needed immediately, not Macron’s presence.
“Mr. President, what I’d like to tell you… is I think the spending you made from Paris to Mayotte would have been better spent to help the people,” he said.
Another resident, Ahamadi Mohammed, said Macron’s visit “is a good thing because he’ll be able to see by himself the damage.”
“I think then we will have a lot to see for the island to recover,” the 58-year-old said.
Macron’s office said four tons of food and medical aid, as well as additional rescuers, were aboard the president’s flight. A navy ship was due to arrive in Mayotte on Thursday with another 180 tons of aid and equipment, according to the French military.
People living in a large slum on the outskirts of Mamoudzou were some of the hardest hit by the cyclone. Many lost their houses, some lost friends.
Nassirou Hamidouni took refuge in his area when the cyclone hit.
His neighbor died when his space collapsed on him and his six children. Hamidouni and others dug through the rubble to reach them.
The 28-year-old father of five is now trying to rebuild his own house, which was also destroyed.
He believes the death toll is much higher than officially reported, given the severity of what he experienced.
“It’s very difficult,” he said.
Mayotte, located in the Indian Ocean between mainland Africa’s east coast and northern Madagascar, is France’s poorest territory.
The cyclone devastated entire neighborhoods and many other people ignored the warnings, thinking that the typhoon would not be so extreme.
Mayotte has more than 320,000 inhabitants according to the French government. Most are Muslims and the French government estimates that 100,000 immigrants live there.
Mayotte is the component of the Comoros archipelago that voted to remain part of France in a 1974 referendum.
Over the past decade, the French territory has seen an influx of immigrants from neighboring islands: the independent country of Comoros, which is one of the poorest countries in the world.