France's Most Remote Region One-Third Destroyed By Hurricane
2- 20.12.2024, 3:04
- 6,732
The French President has arrived on the Mayotte archipelago in the Indian Ocean.
French President Macron arrived on the Mayotte archipelago in the Indian Ocean, north of Madagascar, to see the destruction caused by the recent hurricane Chido. The catastrophic storm, the strongest in 90 years, devastated the island over the weekend. It is expected that the President will fly over the archipelago and see the scale of the destruction from the air.
Euronews reports.
The destruction is enormous. The hurricane has practically wiped off a third of the archipelago. There is little surprise in this: a third of the island's buildings are temporary structures, knocked together from whatever comes to hand, and about 100,000 of the 320,000 residents are illegal migrants who come here in the hope of at least one day receiving French citizenship.
Mayotte is the poorest French region, 8,000 kilometres from Paris, and this overseas territory lives on subsidies from Paris. Apparently, the subsidies are frugal, because there is nothing even remotely resembling civilized France in this territory. For decades, they have been struggling with gang violence and social unrest.
The French government has declared a state of the Exceptional Natural Disaster and frozen prices on consumer goods on the archipelago.
“We are moving to a large-scale phase of support for Mayotte,” said Patrice Latron, prefect of Reunion Island, the closest to Mayotte, when a “civil sea bridge” was launched from the island, along which about 200 containers are to leave for the archipelago on Sunday. The cargo will include the equivalent of “millions of litres of water.” Thanks to these cargoes, “there is no shortage of bottled water,” the authorities said.
At least 31 people have officially died, but the death toll is expected to be much higher, and a third of the island's population is unregistered migrants. In addition, according to Muslim law, which is observed on the archipelago, a body must be buried within 24 hours - and it is not known how many have already been buried.
But even those areas where rescuers have already reached are perceived as terrifying: houses have collapsed here - dilapidated for habitation, they turned out to be dangerous enough to kill people.
"These are mass graves in the open air," are the words local officials used to describe the state of the slums in a conversation with Macron.
Five days after the cyclone struck, emergency services still cannot reach all the areas of the archipelago.
The authorities of the archipelago hope that at least the natural disaster will attract the attention of the French authorities to the distressed region.
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