A devastating cyclone flattened much of the tiny Fiji island of Cikobia yesterday, with most houses and vegetation destroyed, but its 69 villagers survived by hiding in caves, officials said.
Communications to the remote island on Fiji's northeastern border were knocked out in the storm but a brief radio telephone message confirmed all the villagers had been accounted for.
They were able to flee their homes before Cyclone Daman made a direct landing at about 3am and took shelter in caves on the island.
The full extent of the damage to Cikobia is unlikely to be known until today after initial attempts to conduct an aerial survey were aborted because of continuing poor weather.
Relief officials said a boat carrying supplies of medicine, food and tarpaulins would leave for the island late yesterday and another attempt to send in a helicopter would be made at first light today.
Initial reports indicated there had been casualties.
But a nurse on Cikobia was able to get a message to Labasa Hospital on Vanua Levu island to confirm there were no serious injuries, although houses and vegetation had been destroyed, the hospital superintendent, Ami Chand, said.
As Daman, packing hurricane-force winds of up to 260kph, bore down on Fiji on Friday, residents were forced to take shelter and tourists were evacuated from expensive island resorts.
The storm, a category four on a five-point scale, was initially heading for Vanua Levu, Fiji's second largest island, before veering away and making a direct hit on Cikobia.
Although the worst of the storm was considered to have passed by dawn yesterday, residents across Fiji were warned of possible flash-floods in low-lying areas and coastal flooding at high tide.
Fiji is frequently hit by tropical cyclones in the summer months and Cikobia in particular is considered a "cyclone magnet," suffering direct or near-direct hits of Cyclones Kina in 1993, Gavin in 1997 and Ami in 2003.
The Nadi weather office in Fiji said Daman was slowly moving out of the Fiji group towards Tonga and on its present path was not expected to affect any other islands in the Fiji group.
Swedish campaigner Greta Thunberg was deported from Israel yesterday, the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs said, the day after the Israeli navy prevented her and a group of fellow pro-Palestinian activists from sailing to Gaza. Thunberg, 22, was put on a flight to France, the ministry said, adding that she would travel on to Sweden from there. Three other people who had been aboard the charity vessel also agreed to immediate repatriation. Eight other crew members are contesting their deportation order, Israeli rights group Adalah, which advised them, said in a statement. They are being held at a detention center ahead of a
A Chinese scientist was arrested while arriving in the US at Detroit airport, the second case in days involving the alleged smuggling of biological material, authorities said on Monday. The scientist is accused of shipping biological material months ago to staff at a laboratory at the University of Michigan. The FBI, in a court filing, described it as material related to certain worms and requires a government permit. “The guidelines for importing biological materials into the US for research purposes are stringent, but clear, and actions like this undermine the legitimate work of other visiting scholars,” said John Nowak, who leads field
Former Nicaraguan president Violeta Chamorro, who brought peace to Nicaragua after years of war and was the first woman elected president in the Americas, died on Saturday at the age of 95, her family said. Chamorro, who ruled the poor Central American country from 1990 to 1997, “died in peace, surrounded by the affection and love of her children,” said a statement issued by her four children. As president, Chamorro ended a civil war that had raged for much of the 1980s as US-backed rebels known as the “Contras” fought the leftist Sandinista government. That conflict made Nicaragua one of
NUCLEAR WARNING: Elites are carelessly fomenting fear and tensions between nuclear powers, perhaps because they have access to shelters, Tulsi Gabbard said After a trip to Hiroshima, US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard on Tuesday warned that “warmongers” were pushing the world to the brink of nuclear war. Gabbard did not specify her concerns. Gabbard posted on social media a video of grisly footage from the world’s first nuclear attack and of her staring reflectively at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial. On Aug. 6, 1945, the US obliterated Hiroshima, killing 140,000 people in the explosion and by the end of the year from the uranium bomb’s effects. Three days later, a US plane dropped a plutonium bomb on Nagasaki, leaving abut 74,000 people dead by the
RSS