Disaster
Expect At Least Four Cyclones This Year
But Zoe, Ami have caused extensive damage
There are conflicting accounts about how badly the people of the small volcanic islands of Tikopia and Anuta, nearly 1000 kilometres south-east of Honiara, the Solomon Islands capital, got hurt when they were hit by Cyclone Zoe early in January.
After chartering a light plane to reach the islands four or five days before anyone else, Geoff Mackley, a New Zealand freelance photographer, returned to Honiara with lurid accounts of the catastrophe. Mackley, who specialises in filming storms, said he wasn’t prepared for the damage he said was inflicted by winds of 300 to 330 kph. It looked liked a bomb had been dropped on the islands, he said.
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But photographs taken from other aircraft didn’t bear out Mackley’s assessment. The head of the Roman Catholic Church in the Solomons, Archbishop Adrian Smith, said Tikopians had been handling hurricanes for 3000 years and knew how to look after themselves, living in well-built low houses and stocking food for just such troubles.
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In Honiara, the Solomon Islands National Disaster Management office played down the extent of the disaster. It said that an Australian aid assessment of some houses knocked down, food crops damaged, no apparent casualties and people mainly going about their normal business was “more appropriate.”
At the South Pacific cyclone watch centre at Fiji’s Nadi Airport, Rajendra Prasad, director of meteorology, said however that Cyclone Zoe was definitely the most powerful hurricane recorded in the South Pacific, although a final estimate of it strength needed further analysis. Prasad said the Nadi centre estimated Zoe to have blown at up to 240-250 kph, about 100 kph less than estimated by a centre at Honolulu, which he said used a different system.
Virtually insolvent, the Solomon Islands government had to rely largely on Australia and New Zealand support to assess the damage to the two islands, which have a population of about 3500 people, and organised aid for them.
Cyclone Ami, which struck the northern and eastern Fiji on January 14-15 with winds estimated at 135-180 kph caused far more damage. By January 22, the count was 13 people confirmed dead, seven missing and damage initially estimated at F$50 million (US$25 million), a figure expected to climb.
Several hundred small wooden, iron and thatched houses were destroyed or badly damaged and the destruction of food crops in rural areas left several thousand people dependent for a minimum of four weeks on basic rations supplied by the government.
Ami was the worst cyclone to hit Fiji for nearly 10 years. The Nadi office said at least four more could happen in the South Pacific before the end of the current November/April cyclone season.
In the North Pacific, powerful hurricanes (July by Chata’an and December by Pongsana) have in recent months twice ravaged Guam, which estimates the repair bill to be US$75 million. Rota, in the Northern Marianas, was badly devastated by Pongsana in December, with lesser damage to Saipan and Tinian. Chata’an killed about 50 people at Chuuk in the Federated States of Micronesia.
