- Authorities in the Solomon Islands have confirmed that
entire villages have been swept away on the Polynesian island of Tikopia
in the wake of a cyclone.
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- The Solomons Broadcasting (SIBC) report refers to Cyclone
Zoe, which, at the top end of the storm severity scale, last Saturday hit
Tikopia and Anuta, home to some 3,000 people, and although no word has
come from them two surveillance flights Wednesday revealed extensive damage.
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- It is likely to be a week after the storm before anybody
reaches the island, a situation in part a product of the fact that the
Solomon Islands is bankrupt after a four-year long continuing civil war
on the main island of Guadalcanal.
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- The National Disaster Management Office told SIBC that
two entire villages on Tikopia have been buried by sand.
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- Martin Karani of the office told SIBC that after carefully
studying the photographs taken by the Australian Hercules aircraft Wednesday,
it was feared the villages of Ravenga and Namo have been virtually washed
away.
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- The radio said 400 to 500 people were living in Ravenga
and about 200 in Namo.
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- Nothing is known about the fate of the people in the
two villages, which have been built on a strip of land with a lake on one
side and the sea on the other side.
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- In New Zealand, an anthropologist who used to live on
Tikopia, Judith Macdonald, said she believed one of the main villages had
disappeared as well.
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- The premier of the province, Gabriel Teao, earlier said
he believed 11 metre (36 feet) high waves had swept over the low-lying
areas of Tikopia.
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- Meanwhile the head of the medical emergency team going
to Tikopia, Hermann Oberli, told Australian radio that the aerial pictures
of Tikopia were "quite frightening".
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- He said he expected to encounter serious injuries caused
by flying debris, which included shredded treetops and huts torn down by
the fury for the cyclonic winds.
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- "If you have trees and tree tops flying through
the air, you expect quite a few people to be injured," he said.
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- "The seriously injured people, they will not survive.
They will probably already be dead I know.
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- "But there might be other injuries that still need
interventions and then we also have to do some ... jobs to prevent disease
breaking out."
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- A Solomon's police patrol boat, Auki, finally left the
capital Honiara Thursday evening for the cyclone-hit area.
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- Another boat, Lata, as well as a small ship, Isabella,
chartered by Australia and New Zealand, will sail Friday.
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- Patrol boat crew have refused to sail without guarantees
that they will be paid. The first is not expected to arrive until Sunday,
over a week after the disaster.
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- Australia's High Commissioner in the Solomons, Bob Davis,
told an Australian television network that he had taken up the issue with
the Solomon's Government.
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- "There is unfortunately a growing history in the
Solomon Islands of demands for extra allowances to undertake specific work
and in relation to this particular response to the cyclone impact,"
he said.
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- Meanwhile, an Australian doctor, Greg Coates, who lived
on Tikopia in 1991, told the Melbourne Age newspaper that he hoped the
people ran fast when the storm hit and that they called on centuries of
experience of dealing with cyclones.
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- "That island is right on the cyclone belt, they
have been pounded since time began," he told the Age.
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- "Their culture is one of cyclone survival, their
huts are built low to the ground with small doorways that you have to crawl
through and the idea of that is so that wind can't get under and lift the
door up," he said.
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- Coates said hundreds of islanders would have sheltered
under a giant rock ledge behind the island's freshwater lake.
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