Tropical cyclones have had a considerable impact on Mauritius. Large cyclones are relatively rare, and in popular imagination are thought to hit Mauritius every 15 years. Yet it has been over 25 years since the last cyclone widely considered as ‘significant’. Critically, there is little known about the role of memory in responses to cyclones and details regarding responses to past cyclones in Mauritian history are scant.

This article examines past experiences and impacts of cyclones in Mauritius, as well as contemporary perceptions of cyclone vulnerability and memories of historical cyclones. The analysis draws on both community interviews and archival research conducted in Mauritius. The analysis takes a longue durée approach and combines examination of both event and process with historical discourses in an effort to uncover the long-standing and slowly changing relationships between people and extreme events.

The results reveal a number of repetitive patterns of responses that act out over the long term and repeat for many of the largest cyclones, indicating that tropical cyclone impact and recovery in Mauritius is strongly conditioned by complex, cultural, and place based memory (and forgetting). While these patterns could be characterised as cycles, the research instead presents a concept of ‘helices’ as a new conceptualisation of long term disaster memory patterns. This research is part of a growing literature arguing for the need to account for the historical processes fundamental to understanding vulnerability. This has implications for disaster risk reduction (including climate change adaptation) in Mauritius, other small islands, and elsewhere.

热带气旋对毛里求斯产生了相当大的影响。大型旋风相对罕见，并且在大众的想象中，飓风每15年就会袭击毛里求斯。然而，自上次被认为是“重大”旋风以来已经过去了25年。至关重要的是，人们对记忆在旋风反应中的作用了解甚少，关于毛里求斯历史上对过去旋风反应的了解也很少。

本文考察了毛里求斯飓风的过去经验和影响，以及当代对飓风脆弱性的了解以及对历史旋风的记忆。该分析借鉴了在毛里求斯进行的社区访谈和档案研究。该分析采用了一种长寿的方法，并将事件和过程的检验与历史话语相结合，以揭示人们与极端事件之间长期存在且缓慢变化的关系。

结果揭示了许多重复的响应模式，这些响应模式长期发挥作用，并在许多最大的气旋中重复出现，这表明毛里求斯的热带气旋影响和恢复受到复杂，文化和基于地点的记忆（和遗忘）的强烈制约。 ）。尽管可以将这些模式描述为周期，但研究提出了“螺旋”的概念，将其作为长期灾难记忆模式的新概念。这项研究是不断增长的文献的一部分，该文献认为有必要对理解脆弱性至关重要的历史过程进行解释。这对毛里求斯，其他小岛屿和其他地方减少灾害风险（包括适应气候变化）具有影响。