Cyclone toll set to climb
24 confirmed dead but news awaited from devastated areas
REPORTS from the outer islands of Vanuatu yesterday painted a picture of utter destruction after a monster cyclone tore through the South Pacific island nation, flattening buildings and killing at least eight people.
Disaster management officials and relief workers were struggling to establish contact with the islands that bore the brunt of Cyclone Pam’s winds of more than 300km/h, which destroyed homes, smashed boats and washed away roads and bridges as it struck late on Friday, into Saturday.
The official toll of 24 killed and 20 injured looked certain to rise as reports began to trickle in from the hardest-hit parts of the archipelago.
“More than 90% of the buildings have been destroyed,” Vanuatu President Baldwin Lonsdale said from Tokyo.
The Australian Red Cross said it had reports of total devastation on the southern island of Tanna, with most homes destroyed. Tanna, about 200km south of capital Port Vila, took the full force of the category five storm, with at least two people dead.
Reports from aid groups said the main town on the island of Erroman- go, north of Tanna, had suffered similar destruction. A clean-up was under way in Port Vila, where seas were reported to have surged as high as 8m, with as much as three-quarters of the capital’s houses reported destroyed or severely damaged.
“Things in Port Vila are improving, people are returning to the market and getting on with the job of starting the clean-up, but the key thing is we still have no contact with other provinces,” Tom Perry, from aid agency Care Australia, said from the capital.
A 6pm to 6am curfew had been imposed in the capital to prevent looting, Oxfam’s country manager, Colin Collett van Rooyen, said. He said there were unconfirmed reports of minor looting of hardware equipment.
Red Cross Vanuatu chief executive Jacqueline de Gaillarde said shops were low on supplies and people had lost their food supplies when their homes were destroyed.
Food, humanitarian people to do assessments, transport and boats to access the islands were needed, she said. Disease was a concern amid widespread flooding.
Military flights from New Zealand and Australia were bringing in water, sanitation kits, medicines and temporary shelters, while France and the US were also sending aid.