Cyclone Pam death toll rises to 24 as Vanuatu begins to assess damage

By The Guardian

At least 24 people in Vanuatu have been killed and 3,300 have been displaced by cyclone Pam, the UN has said.

Authorities will on Tuesday identify Vanuatu’s worst-hit areas using aerial surveys by Australian and French aircraft.

On Monday the aircraft flew over the province of Tafea, where severe impacts are feared after a private pilot gave an early report of more deaths, widespread property damage and water shortages on the island of Tanna.

Little is still known of conditions on the ground in outlying islands after Pam wiped out the archipelago’s wider telecommunications network.

Patrick Sarjinson, a government worker engaged in the cleanup in Port Vila, told Guardian Australia of the death of a one-week-old baby in a church which had its roof blown off by severe winds. 

Sarjinson said the baby’s mother and father had taken shelter in Pakaroa church next to his house, which lost part of its roof in the same deadly gusts.

“Just one week old … dead … because the roof, gone,” he said, adding the parents had buried their baby on Sunday.

Four westerners who were sheltering on yachts when cyclone Pam devastated Port Vila harbour – including a young child – are believed to be among the victims of the natural disaster.

The bodies of a family of three and a middle-aged man who had been aboard two yachts moored in the capital were later retrieved from the harbour, Guardian Australia has been told, but their identities and nationality remain unclear.

Fishing and diving tour operator Leanne Phillips said the middle-aged man’s body had been discovered in the debris near the water’s edge next to her business, with police taking pictures at the scene.

“It was terrible,” Phillips said.

Wild storm surges smashed or sank most of about 100 yachts moored in Port Vila on Friday night, including all three of the Phillips family’s dive and fishing boats. 

Widespread destruction had triggered an exodus of other expatriate business operators, Phillips said, which would have an unfortunate domino effect on local employment where extended families relied on such incomes, she said.

On the fringe of Port Vila away from the tourist district, food supplies were running low in one evacuation centre. 

A community of subsistence farmers from Etas outside of Port Vila faced an uncertain future after evacuating their village to take shelter at Lycée Bougainville in Naburu, where 38 families sleep on school desks and classroom floors. 

The community chieftain, Samuel Willey, said authorities had told him they would soon have to find alternative accommodation but the storm had wiped out all their crops and left only 10 of more than 200 of their dwellings standing.

“The National Disaster Management Office only give us some crackers but the children need to fill their stomachs,” Willey said.

Corn, legumes and banana crops that sustained a community of 400 and sold at markets to pay for children’s schooling would take months to re-establish.

“I was born in 1966 and I’ve never experienced a cyclone like this. After the cyclone I saw the village and it’s like a desert. There’s nothing standing. We’re starting from zero,” Willey said.

The community needed tents to live in while rebuilding the village, and perhaps a rainwater tank, he said.

In nearby Freshwater, paramedic Winnifa Mael described losing the roof of her rented unit while her family lay in bed.

“The roof really started to vibrate , then it just went upwards – and it was a scary experience because it made a sound like a whoosh, then it slapped down then went behind us,” Mael, 23, said.

“The power was out and we didn’t know where to run. The door seemed to disappear. [Outside] everyone was screaming around but on the other side they were all losing their roofs also.”

Mael wrapped her five-year-old son – who remained asleep throughout the ordeal – in a blanket and took shelter in a communal bathroom before spending a sleepless night on her neighbour’s verandah.

In the morning Mael told her son – still oblivious to the cyclone– not to open his eyes until they arrived at her parents’ house. “Then I started explaining, ‘Our house is lost.’ I didn’t wan’t to scare him,” she said. 

The capital remained a picture of devastation on the third day after Pam, even as running water and electricity returned to some districts.

Government workers with machetes cleared fallen trees from streets while a vast number of uninhabitable houses prompted residents to erect makeshift shelters.

Vanuatu lands minister Ralph Regenvanu said the government would be briefed on Monday night after the survey of Tafea, while a small team of aid agency staff had only just arrived on Tanna to make preliminary assessments of the most urgent needs.

Care International Vanuatu director Charlie Damon said one of her colleagues had arrived in Tanna with others from World Vision on Monday but had no way of relaying back reports.

The aid organisation would send more staff to assess what supplies were needed, but even basic logistics like transport around the island were uncertain, she said.