The Seychelles archipelago declared a state of emergency on Thursday and urged its residents to stay at home after an explosion at an explosives warehouse and flooding, a press release from the presidency said.
“Following an explosion at the CCCL explosives depot that caused major damage (…) and extensive destruction caused by heavy rains, the President declared a state of emergency for today, December 7,” said the President of the Indian Ocean archipelago, Wavel Ramkalawan, in this text.
“All schools will be closed. Only workers employed in essential sectors will be allowed to travel so that emergency services can carry out their important work,” he added.
The explosion occurred in the Providence industrial area of Mahé and caused enormous damage on site and in the surrounding area, the presidency added without further details. Mahé is the largest island in the archipelago, home to 87% of the 98,000 inhabitants.
“The Seychelles international airport remains operational, as do inter-island passenger ferries,” says the official tourism site Visit Seychelles on X.
The Seychelles archipelago, a former British colony, is known for its paradisiacal white sandy beaches and luxury tourism. It consists of 115 islands and, according to the World Bank, is the richest African country in terms of gross domestic product per capita, driven by tourism and fishing. But this index hides great inequalities: due to the cost of living, almost 40% of the population lives in poverty.
East Africa and the Indian Ocean have been hit for weeks by heavy rains and floods linked to the El Niño phenomenon, which have displaced more than a million people in Somalia and left more than 300 dead in the region, which is highly vulnerable to climate change Extreme weather phenomena are becoming more frequent and more intense.
According to the United Nations, the situation was aggravated by the joint influence of El Niño in the Pacific, which causes unusually high temperatures in the ocean, and on the other hand by the Indian Ocean dipole, a divergence in sea surface temperatures between the western and eastern areas of the ocean.
El Niño, which typically involves rising temperatures, droughts in some parts of the world and heavy rains in others, is expected to last until April.
This meteorological phenomenon has already caused devastating damage in East Africa. From October 1997 to January 1998, gigantic floods caused by heavy rains killed more than 6,000 people in five countries in the region.