Vanuatu death toll rises to 24 amid scenes of devastation

Relief workers struggle to establish contact with islands that bore brunt of Cyclone Pam

One of the Pacific Ocean’s most powerful ever storms Cyclone Pam has devastated the island nation of Vanuatu, reportedly killing dozens, aid officials have said. The United Nations is preparing a major relief operation. Video: REUTERS

Reports from the outer islands of Vanuatu painted a picture of utter destruction after a huge cyclone tore through the South Pacific island nation, flattening buildings and killing at least 24 people.

Disaster management officials and relief workers have struggled 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 and into Saturday.

Twenty-four people were confirmed killed, and 3,300 displaced and sheltering at 37 evacuation centres, according to a statement by the National Disaster Management Office. But the number could rise as communications are restored with outlying islands of the scattered archipelago.

“Many of the buildings and houses have been completely destroyed,” Vanuatu president Baldwin Lonsdale said. “More than 90 per cent of the buildings have been destroyed.” The president said climate change was partly to blame for the devastation across Vanuatu.

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Oxfam Ireland’s chief executive Jim Clarken said the damage left in the wake of the cyclone was likely to be “one of the worst disasters ever seen in the Pacific”.

“There is no power at the hospital which has also flooded in parts, and damage to the state mortuary means a temporary mortuary must be set up quickly,” he said.

Port Vila, the capital, which took the full force of the category 5 storm, was recently named in the Natural Hazards Risk Atlas as the city most exposed to natural disasters in the world. The city faces a combination of risks including earthquakes, tsunamis, flooding and tropical cyclones.

Homes destroyed

The Australian Red Cross said it had reports of “total devastation” on the southern island of Tanna, with most homes destroyed. Tanna is about 200km south of the capital, Port Vila, with its 29,000 inhabitants, where there were reports of at least two people dead.

Reports from aid groups said the main town on the island of Erromango, 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 Care Australia said.

Eye of the storm

“That’s of grave concern because there’s no real sense from anyone of what the impact has been, but we know in the south in particular, it sat under the eye of the storm for hours.”

A 6pm-6am curfew had been imposed in the capital to prevent looting, said Colin Collett van Rooyen, Oxfam’s country manager.

“Clean water, sanitation and hygiene supplies are a major issue for those left homeless and also those in evacuation centres, where there simply are not enough toilets or clean water for the amount of people in those facilities,” said Mr van Rooyen.

Red Cross Vanuatu chief executive Jacqueline de Gaillarde said shops were already low on supplies because people had stockpiled food before the storm but those supplies were then lost when homes were destroyed.

“We need food for the coming weeks and we need humanitarian people to do assessments and we need transport, we need boats to access the islands because lots of the airports on the islands are grass only and they are flooded so we cannot land,” Ms de Gaillarde said from Port Vila.

Diseases, including dengue fever and malaria, were a concern amid widespread flooding, she added.

Military flights from New Zealand and Australia were bringing water, sanitation, medicines and temporary shelters for the estimated 10,000 made homeless on the main island. France and the US are also sending aid. – (Reuters)