Villagers evacuated after island wiped out by Winston

Transcript

Women and children from a small Fijian island directly hit by Cyclone Winston are recovering in Suva after their village was wiped out.

Yacata island in Fiji's northern Lau Group of islands took the brunt of the category 5 storm as it swept in on Saturday afternoon.

48 of the 200 people who live on Yacata were evacuated in a Twin Otter aircraft on Sunday morning and some have been hospitalised.

Penioni Toga who is from Yacata and lives in Suva says half of the 50 houses in Yacata village were swept a kilometre inland by the huge waves whipped up by Winston.

He told Sally Round luckily Winston struck during the day and no one was killed.

PENIONI TOGA: Most were not expecting it to be as bad as what happened. Most stayed in house and as it goes on after a couple of hours there were very very strong winds, the breeze was really coming through the village, so aggressive and devastating. It started blowing off roofs after roofs and even the village store was taken away by the tidal waves. You'll never see those houses again.

SALLY ROUND: So there were storm surges coming right into the island. How far inland?

PT: Almost a kilometre inland.

SR: So where did the people take shelter?

PT: They grabbed whatever they could stay on until the next rescue operation comes in. Some of them lying under their table, lying under their bed, three to four hours and the tidal wave struck and the devastating winds were still blowing. You can't do anything anymore. You just got to do your ... wrap yourself up and stay where you are. Even those debris and all those flapping things were coming on to you, so those are the only things available to you at the time. No other options for you until the wind and the tidal wave is going down.

SR: There is a resort on the island. There was a plane on the island that was able to evacuate the women and children?

PT: Yes that's the only option for me to get in touch with the resort. I want to thank Rob and Linda for their great help and assistance.

SR: So what happened then. Tell me what happened after the cyclone in terms of the evacuation?

PT: We have to wait for the wind to die down. That took us the whole of Saturday night until Sunday morning.

SR: So the women and children were flown out to Suva?

PT: Yes and then we put up an evacuation programme with Rob on Kaibu island who was able to offer us a Twin Otter from the resort to transit all the 48.

SR: How are those people? How are those women and children who were evacuated?

PT: Some of them have some slight, some injuries that were booked to go to hospital. They were checked and hospitalised, had some medication and they are put to rest for the time being.

SR: Were there many serious injuries?

PT: You know we were lucky that it happened during the day, Sally. That's the most fortunate thing. They were able to manoeuvre around and get into another area they know.

SR: Are they traumatised by what they've experienced?

PT: Yeh  because they have never experienced any such effect in their lives. It's the first ever damaging cyclone for them. I think it will be part of their life, having seen what has happened on the island. It took down houses that you would never think would go down.

SR: So now what will happen to that island? What will happen in terms of recovery do you think?

PT: We are under damage control now. We are organising to get some people from Suva to go and assist the clearing of debris which might take about one or two weeks. We're trying to get people here locally with skills and tools and equipment to go in and do the rehab work.

SR: Just looking at the photos, Penioni, I can see that there are whole concrete homes that have been completely smashed up. Is it a surprise that these concrete structures didn't withstand the cyclone?

PT: Yes exactly, exactly Sally. This hurricane will traumatise them because they would never expect concrete blocks to go down, just like go down to ash. That's another thing that really traumatised them now by seeing what happened to those constructed block houses, gone down to ashes.