First news from cut-off communities in Vanuatu suggests category five cyclone has left thousands homeless and dozens dead

The first aid agencies to reach Vanuatu reported a scene of widespread devastation on Sunday after a huge cyclone tore through the Pacific island nation, leaving thousands homeless. Dozens are feared to have died.



Air force planes began to arrive with supplies from Australia and New Zealand as officials struggled to establish the full scale of the disaster, thought to have affected more than 265,000 people spread over 65 islands. President Baldwin Lonsdale said the “monster” Cyclone Pam had wiped out most buildings in the capital Port Vila, including schools and clinics.

Making an impassioned plea for international help from the World Conference on Disaster Risk and Reduction in Japan, Lonsdale appealed for international support. “I am speaking to you today with a heart that is so heavy,” he said in a televised address. “I stand to appeal on behalf of the government and the people to give a helping hand in this disaster.”



Aid agencies said that more than 2,000 people were sheltering in 25 evacuation centres on the island of Efate as well as in Torba and Penama provinces after their homes were destroyed by the category-five cyclone.

A pilot who flew to Tanna – an island of 30,000 people south of Port Vila – on Sunday reported more bodies and said there was no drinking water, while the island’s infrastructure and permanent shelters were destroyed.

Cyclone Pam: Vanuatu death toll rises as Australia pledges $5m in aid – rolling report Read more

It was the first news from outside Port Vila, where eight people have been confirmed dead, thousands left homeless and most civil infrastructure damaged in the aftermath of the cyclone on Friday and Saturday.



Tanna and the less populated Erromango island have been the focus of concern from the Vanuatu government and aid agencies, who have no means of communicating with anywhere outside the capital after the disaster.



Aurelia Balpe, head of the Red Cross’s Pacific operations, said the pilot had briefed the agency that people in Tanna “were waiting to be heard”. “What he saw when they landed and took off again was [that] all of the corrugated iron structures were pretty much destroyed, the concrete structures had no roofs left, all the trees had been ripped out,” Balpe said. “People were saying [there is] no drinking water. He also reported two deaths, but that’s not confirmed by government.”



Things were similar in Erromango, Balpe said.



Authorities in Port Vila, still unable to assess the true scale of the destruction, were waiting on aerial surveys from an Australian military plane and the restoration of some remote telecommunications towers on other islands.

The Vanuatu lands minister, Ralph Regenvanu, said the government regarded the entire population of about 266,000 people as having been affected by the huge storm, which ripped through the South Pacific archipelago on Friday night and into Saturday.



The destruction of cyclone Pam - in pictures Read more

“This is the worst disaster to affect Vanuatu ever, as far as we know. We’re going to need a lot of assistance,” he said.



Lonsdale told the BBC that most of the population of his country was homeless in the wake of Cyclone Pam.







The Australian and New Zealand governments have announced emergency aid packages totalling A$7.4m (£3.8m).



An Australian surveillance plane was conducting an aerial survey, weather permitting. It was one of four military planes that flew from Amberley, near Brisbane, to Port Vila. The other three carried emergency supplies, medical and disaster teams and aid workers.

Meanwhile, Balpe said the pilot’s account from Tanna revealed a true emergency. “The priority is getting someone down to have a look and talk to the local authorities,” she said.



The Red Cross already had volunteers and emergency supplies in Tanna, but Balpe reported that “by the impact that he described, those things are just a very small proportion of what is required”.



Motorists in Port Vila queued for more than an hour for petrol at the only open fuel station, while a landslide and the destruction of several bridges in the city’s east made travel outside the capital virtually impossible.



Kenny Ang, an Australian living in Vanuatu, sheltered from the storm in the northern Efate town of Havannah. He told the Guardian he swam across a river and borrowed a friend’s car to make it into Port Vila. Ang said he saw entire villages decimated on his journey to the capital, where the extent of the damage was equally shocking. “We saw people on the side of the road and they’re trying to rebuild in the aftermath, but obviously it’s going to take a long time before anything gets fixed,” he said.



“We’re currently in a queue that’s taken one hour to get petrol from the one station that’s open. I think it’s going to take half an hour to 45 minutes to actually get petrol. People are waiting in line with containers and barrels to fill up to get to where they want to go.”



Ang said from Havannah he could see that the islands of Moso and Lelepa, “normally a luscious, rolling green, have been stripped bare” by the cyclone.

