French President Emmanuel Macron promised to “rebuild” Mayotte as distraught and angry local people jeered and shouted out their grievances during his visit to the cyclone-devastated Indian Ocean archipelago on Thursday.
Five days after Cyclone Chido left a trail of destruction in its wake, Macron said France would rebuild schools, homes and hospitals there and also crack down on illegal immigration.
He also declared a national day of mourning for the victims of the disaster for Monday.
Emergency teams are still working at full pace, searching for survivors and supplying desperately-needed aid.
But as Macron inspected the destruction on the French overseas territory, local people shouted their grievances to him.
“Mister President, nobody feels safe here,” one woman told Macron during his visit to the Mamoudzou hospital centre. “People are fighting over water.”
And as Macron talked with hospital workers, one staff member said under her breath: “Two more days and we won’t be able to feed the patients anymore. I’m disgusted.”
One man in the group called the president’s attention to looting, saying thieves could easily enter houses that had had their roofs blown off, despite the nightly curfew.
“Mister President, we fear that this is becoming like Haiti,” he said in a reference to the poverty-stricken, crime-ridden Caribbean country that has been in a state of emergency since March.
– ‘Everything in my power’ –
Macron listened to the accounts, touching the arm of a woman in tears to comfort her.
“I will do everything in my power so you have water, food and electricity,” he said.
Later, Macron said they aimed to have supplied all parts of the archipelago with food and water by Sunday at the latest.
Macron also vowed to “rebuild” Mayotte.
He would step up the fight against illegal immigration “while at the same time rebuilding schools, rebuilding homes, rebuilding the hospital”, he told reporters.
“Don’t let anybody say that the government threw in the towel.”
Later, as a group of angry youths called on him to resign, he retorted: “It’s not me, the cyclone.”
Macron’s visit came after Paris declared “exceptional natural disaster” measures for Mayotte late on Wednesday.
Located near Madagascar off the coast of southeastern Africa, Mayotte is France’s poorest region.
Macron’s aeroplane carried some 20 doctors, nurses and civil security personnel on board, as well as four tonnes of food and sanitary supplies.
“Don’t leave too soon,” airport security official Assan Halo pleaded with the president as he arrived. “We have nothing left.”
– ‘Worst’ disaster ‘in centuries’ –
Some bystanders jeered the presidential convoy as it passed a petrol station where cars were lined up in a long queue hoping to buy fuel.
“It’s crazy,” said one Mayotte policeman asking not to be named. “You get the feeling that the government completely underestimated the disaster’s scale.”
A preliminary toll from France’s interior ministry shows that 31 people have been confirmed killed, 45 seriously hurt, and more than 1,370 suffering lighter injuries. But officials say that, realistically, a final death toll of hundreds or even thousands is likely.
“The tragedy of Mayotte is probably the worst natural disaster in the past several centuries of French history,” Prime Minister Francois Bayrou said.
France on Thursday said it had activated the European Union’s Civil Protection Mechanism, a pooled response by EU members and others to disasters.
In response to widespread shortages, the government issued a decree freezing the prices of consumer goods in the archipelago at their pre-cyclone levels.
Meteorologists say Cyclone Chido, which hit Mayotte on Saturday, was the latest in a string of storms worldwide fuelled by climate change.
– ‘Mass graves’ –
An estimated one-third of Mayotte’s population lived in shantytowns whose flimsy, sheet metal-roofed homes offered scant protection from the storm.
At Mamoudzou hospital centre, windows were blown out and doors ripped off their hinges. Most of the medics had taken to sleeping at their battered workplace, as Chido had swept away their homes.
Staff soldiered on despite the hospital being out of action, electricians racing to restore a maternity ward, France’s largest with around 10,000 births a year.
Much of Mayotte’s population is Muslim, whose religious tradition dictates that bodies be buried rapidly, so some of the dead may never be identified.
“There are open-air mass graves. No emergency services,” said Estelle Youssouffa, a National Assembly deputy for Mayotte. “Nobody is coming to get the bodies.”
One man in the crowd told Macron: “In the shantytowns, people bury the bodies in shallow graves.”
Assessing the toll is further complicated by illegal immigration into Mayotte, especially from the Comoros islands to the north, which means that much of the population is unregistered.
While Mayotte officially has 320,000 inhabitants, the authorities estimate the actual figure is between 100,000 and 200,000 higher when taking into account undocumented migrants.
burs-jj/bc
