New Zealand flew emergency supplies to cyclone-battered Cook Islands yesterday after the storm wrecked two northern atolls and headed toward southern islands packing gusts as high as 255km an hour.
Cyclone Percy was the fourth such storm to slam the South Pacific nation in as many weeks.
There have been no deaths or serious injuries, but the cyclones have inflicted widespread damage to buildings, trees and crops in coastal areas.
Thousands of villagers on the country's main island of Rarotonga were busy making last-minute repairs and preparations ahead of Percy's arrival, Cook Islands' deputy prime minister, Geoffrey Henry, told New Zealand's National Radio.
"Houses down by the foreshore have all been battened down. The whole island of Rarotonga has been hit by the last three cyclones and people have taken the message" to protect themselves, he said.
Cyclone Percy wrecked up to 90 percent of the buildings in the country's two northern atolls of Pukapuka and Nassau when it passed almost directly over them.
Nobody was injured, but the 670 people on those two atolls urgently need shelter, food and water -- which was expected to reach them by boat on Saturday, the country's Emergency Operations Center spokesman Chief Inspector John Tini said yesterday.
The New Zealand relief flight will be unable to land on Pukapuka's damaged air strip, heading instead for the island of Penrhyn, from where the supplies will be shipped to the battered islands -- a sea trip that takes about a day and a half.
Cyclone Percy was due to pass the small island of Palmerston late yesterday and reach Rarotonga on today.
It will be the fourth cyclone in a month to hammer the area, following Cyclones Meena, Nancy and Olaf.
The cyclone, packing sustained wind speeds near its center of 185km an hour, gusting to 255km an hour, was moving south at about 9km an hour and accelerating, the Fiji Meteorological Office said.
The office issued a tropical cyclone alert for all seven southern Cook Islands as the Category Four cyclone approached.
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