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 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 300 kph (185 mph), which destroyed homes,
smashed boats and washed away roads and bridges as it struck late on
Friday and into Saturday.
The official toll of eight killed and 20 injured looked certain to
rise as reports began to trickle from the hardest hit parts of the
scattered archipelago.
"Many of the buildings and houses have been completely destroyed,
Vanuatu President Baldwin Lonsdale told Reuters in Tokyo. "More than
90 percent of the buildings have been destroyed."
The Australian Red Cross said it had reports of "total devastation"
on the southern island of Tanna, with most homes destroyed. Tanna,
about 200 km (125 miles) south of the capital, Port Vila, with its
29,000 inhabitants took the full force of the category 5 storm, with
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 8 meters (26 ft), 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, told Reuters by telephone
from the capital.
"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 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. curfew had been imposed in the capital to prevent
looting, said Colin Collett van Rooyen, Oxfam's country manager. Van
Rooyen said there has been unconfirmed reports of minor looting of
hardware equipment.
AID ARRIVING
Red Cross Vanuatu CEO 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," 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 in
water, sanitation kits, medicines and temporary shelters for the
estimated 10,000 made homeless on the main island, with supplies
being unloaded late into the evening at the airport. France and the
United States were also sending aid.
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Commercial flights resumed on Monday, bringing in more aid and
taking out tourists.
Formerly known as the New Hebrides, Vanuatu is a sprawling cluster
of more than 80 islands and 260,000 people, 2,000 km (1,250 miles)
northeast of the Australian city of Brisbane.
Perched on the geologically active Pacific Ring of Fire, one of the
world's poorest nations suffers from frequent earthquakes and
tsunamis and has several active volcanoes, in addition to threats
from storms and rising sea levels.
President Lonsdale, who had been in Japan for a U.N. disaster
conference when the storm hit, said it would take time for his
country to recover.
"What is happening now is that, as I've seen over and over again,
the people of the Republic of Vanuatu need humanitarian assistance
at the moment," he said. "And I'm very pleased with the
international community that they have responded to my appeal."
Aid officials said the storm was comparable in strength to Typhoon
Haiyan, which hit the Philippines in 2013 and killed more than 6,000
people.
Australia promised A$5 million ($3.8 million) in aid and New Zealand
NZ$2.5 million ($1.8 million). Britain, which jointly ruled Vanuatu
with France until independence in 1980, has offered up to 2 million
pounds ($2.95 million) in assistance.
International Monetary Fund said it was ready to send funds and
assistance to rebuild Vanuatu's economy.
Pam had been downgraded and moved off the east coast of the North
Island of New Zealand by late on Monday, creating huge seas, heavy
rain and strong winds, but so far little damage.
(Additional reporting by Gyles Beckford in WELLINGTON and Teppei
Kasai in TOKYO; Writing by Lincoln Feast in SYDNEY; Editing by Paul
Tait and Alex Richardson)
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