"Where have all the people gone?" The question immediately occupied minds, after Cyclone Chido devastated the Indian Ocean French territory of Mayotte on December 14. And rumors quickly spread. "60,000 dead, rescue workers' estimates," posted Réunion la 1ère channel on X on Thursday, December 19, before deleting the post. The toll was denied by the Interior Ministry, but the question remains: Where have all the people gone?

On the same day, as President Emmanuel Macron met the crowds in the town of Pamandzi, he was taken to task. In front of the cameras, Estelle Youssouffa, a local centrist MP told him about the "buried" undocumented population and the smell of "rotting corpses" in the poorer neighborhoods. "We are faced with mass graves, there are no rescuers," she told Macron. The president turned to the department's prefect, François-Xavier Bieuville. "Hasn't anyone been there?" he asked "We haven't been up there yet, for reasons of urgency on vital matters," answered the prefect.

In the devastated archipelago, no one went into the shantytowns. State authorities have simply flown over in helicopters. They are convinced that bodies are lying under metal sheets. As early as December 15, the prefect had spoken of "probably several hundred, maybe a thousand, even a few thousand" dead. A civil servant, speaking on condition of anonymity, described the communication as "far too anxiety-provoking and not based on any concrete data." Symptomatic of a lack of organization? Imperfect crisis management? A reflection of this French department, where a third of the population – the poorest of the poor – live in neglected shantytowns?

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