Many people remained hunkered down in hundreds of evacuation centres across the country, where they had headed before tropical cyclone Winston hit late Saturday, packing winds of up to 325 kph (200 mph).
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The Colonial War Memorial Hospital in Suva suffered extensive water damage, and the roof of a local hospital was blown off in the northwestern town of Ba, said Sune Gudnitz, head of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs regional office for the Pacific. “There’s been a very well-co-ordinated disaster response and we’re deploying quickly”.
Save the Children Fiji chief Iris Low-McKenzie said it was too early to assess the impact on outlying islands, although unconfirmed reports said thousands of homes had been destroyed and entire villages flattened.
Rescuers are battling through downed power pylons and flooding after one of the most powerful storms in the southern hemisphere struck Fiji, killing at least five people.
Fiji has embarked on a massive clean-up operation after what is described as the worst cyclone ever to hit the South Pacific island nation.
“Most are going about their business or helping clean up”.
The majority of the fatalities were along the western coast and were caused mainly by flying debris and drowning in storm surges, authorities said.
About 80% of the nation’s 900,000 people were without regular power, although about one-third of them were able to get some power from generators.
A nationwide curfew was extended through Sunday and the government declared a 30-day state of natural disaster, giving extra powers to police to arrest people without a warrant in the interest of public safety.
With much of the recovery effort focused on urban areas in Fiji, emergency workers said they would begin shifting their attention to more rural regions, some reportedly annihilated by the storm, across the 300 islands making up the archipelago.
“This is a time of sorrow, but it will also be a time of action”, he said.
The nation is a popular tourist destination.
Fiji’s Minister for Industry, Trade and Tourism Faiyaz Siddiq Koya said all visitors to Fiji were accounted for. Schools are closed for a week to check for damage and universities are shut until further notice, according to Fiji government announcements on Facebook.
Airlines Virgin and Jetstar on Saturday suspended flights at Fiji’s worldwide airport, and the national carrier suspended all flights.
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But Alice Clements, a Unicef Pacific communications specialist in Fiji’s relatively unharmed capital city Suva, said the amount of destruction to livelihoods, infrastructure and homes in such disasters is “just immense”.
