Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Cyclone Chido devastated the Indian Ocean island of Mayotte, destroying an estimated 20,000 homes and wiping out entire shantytown neighborhoods. The island has about 65,000 households, so a third may be flattened. Godzilla-sized waves measured as high as 22 feet. About half the population still lacks electricity, and ironically water scarcity menaces many residents. The death toll is unknown. It is likely in the hundreds and possibly in the thousands.
At its most violent, Chido had winds of 150 miles per hour, and was still going nearly 140 miles an hour when it hit Mayotte. Huts, tin shanties, and bungalows offered no shelter at all from this juggernaut.
The Grantham Institute at Britain’s Imperial College estimated that human-caused climate change has made it 40% more likely that a tropical cyclone such as Chido would move from a Category 3 (11–129 miles per hour) to a Category 4 (130–156 miles per hour) on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale. That is, the average global surface temperature is now 2.34º F. (1.3º C.) higher than in the late 1700s before the Industrial Revolution put all that carbon dioxide into the atmosphere by burning coal (and later petroleum and fossil gas). That extra heat makes the Indian Ocean hotter, and hot ocean waters create and turbocharge cyclones (called “hurricanes” in the Atlantic). Hot waters also put more moisture into the atmosphere, causing massive downpours of the sort that struck Mayotte. The scientists at the Grantham institute warn that if we heat the world up by 4.68º F. (2.6º C.) above the average of the late 1700s, cyclones like Chido will be 66% more likely to move from a Cat 3 to a Cat 4.
Seriously, I don’t know how people expect to have civilization if we do that, i.e. if we don’t stop burning gasoline and coal right now. France is able to establish an emergency airlift of food and supplies to Mayotte from Réunion off the coast of Madagascar, without which there would be mass starvation within 4 days. But what if hurricanes even more powerful than Chido hit Réunion and Mayotte at the same time? Repeatedly?
I lived in the Horn of Africa when I was a teenager, and it gave me an interest in the region. If you come down the coast of West Africa, Kenya gives way to Tanzania below Mombasa. And then just south of Mtwara you come to the border with Malawi. And if you got on a ship there and went out a little southeast, you’d come to the Comoros islands (in Arabic, jaza’ir al-qamar or Islands of the Moon). Comoros is an independent country now, consisting of three islands. It is a former French colony that became independent in 1975 and is a member of the Arab League.
But a fourth island, Mayotte, might have become part of Comoros in the age of decolonization in the 1970s. The people there instead voted to remain part of France, and they are now recognized as an overseas département. When you’re part of France, you’re part of France, no matter if you are out on the edge of Africa facing the Indian Ocean. They have a deputy in the French National Assembly and two senators. Puerto Rico should be so lucky.
French President Emmanuel Macron even came for a visit on Thursday.
The 320,000 people there are mostly Sunni Muslims of Bantu heritage and their language descends from Swahili (Arabic for the “coastal language”). There are a few Roman Catholics. About 20% of the population has good French, essential for getting a government job. There may be 100,000 undocumented migrants — people come from the Comoros to Mayotte hoping it will be a launching pad for getting into France.
It is tempting to see what happened to Mayotte as a fluke, and to see the suffering there as that of a distant and exotic people. But islands and coastal areas being flattened by hurricanes is going to become more and more common, and future storms will be even more destructive. This cosmopolitan member of the Islands of the Moon is trying to tell us something. We should listen.
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Bonus Video:
French Mayotte cyclone’s toll still unclear as authorities ramp up response • FRANCE 24 English
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