New Zealand Blows Lid Off Cyclone Pam Coverup

In Cyclone Pam‘s aftermath, aid distribution in Vanuatu is being criticized Friday, a week after the super storm. As some villagers in the Least Developing Pacific Island nation have been eight days with no food or water delivered, as 3 News reports, the coordinating body for nation’s disaster relief has said people need to patient and will get exactly what they need.

“We are disappointed,” Tongoa Island resident Richard John says. “It’s been eight days now, and nothing has been done. We are still waiting.”

Tongoa is the largest island in Vanuatu‘s Shepherd Island group. The 9 km x 6 km island is in Shefa Province of Vanuatu. Tongoa has an airport. An “assessment” flight flew over Tongoa three days ago. When it did, the islanders flashed mirrors to attract attention. There were, however, no air-drops, no sign of hope, no observing human rights to food and water.

One might have thought otherwise in reading an AP article title on Tuesday, Relief groups rush aid to Vanuatu’s cyclone-stricken islands. Flyover crews surveying outer islands saw survivors below trying to signal them for help, according to Colin Collett van Rooyen, Vanuatu director for aid group Oxfam. None of those flights earlier in the week, however, dropped no provisions, even knowing some villagers where there were no coconuts had begun resorting to drinking saltwater.

Over 100 people in Richard John’s village alone desperately await food and water. They feel they’ve been totally ignored according to New Zealand’s 3 News. Michael Morrah traveled there and saw first-hand the dire situation. He and a cameraman hitched a ride with a crew going to work on communication towers.

The villagers immediately gathered in hope that help had finally arrived. They met 3 News at what remains standing of the battered Nambagasale Secondary School.

“What we found when we got there,” Morrah said, “was enough for us to say, ‘Hey, look. Here’s out supply of water, because we were the only thing approaching help that they had seen since the cyclone hit.”

Indefinite sentence in isolated confinement

Mr. John was eager to get the message out, according to TV News 3.

“At the moment, there’s nothing,” John told 3 News, “What we have here is only three bags of flour and some mackerel. This will only last two to three days, then after that we are left with nothing.”

All their rice is inedible and “smells rotten” he explains, as he took Morrah and showed the food supply, holding a hand of rice that appeared mushy and moldy.

Morrah commented, “It kind of smells rotten in here. It smells like it’s gone off.”

John said, “We do not know when help is coming because we are disconnected from the other parts of the country.”

Tongoa islander’s story is not rare or unique at the moment. It is only one among 64 inhabited islands in Vanuatu. Others are reporting the same human rights abuses that echo the horrors heard during Hurricane Katrina’s aftermath as people died.

“We are running short of food, water, shelter and electricity,” Tanna Island resident Ropate Vuso, 67, told Reuters on Wednesday, five days after the cyclone hit. “We have no communications, we are still waiting for the people from parliament, the chief and the president, but still nobody is coming.”

On the main island Efate, only about 15 miles from the capital city Port Vila where all the expert aid response teams are still assessing and planning what to do in the “rapid response,” it wasn’t until Thursday that many villagers had their first hot meal. That was because Westpac Bank privided a sausage sizzle for over 300 people Mele villagers, most of whom were children.

Also on Efate island, Chief Narua Joe Kwane of the village Taunono near Port Vila said Wednesday, “Everything is gone. All the houses are damaged or destroyed. We now have to live outside, sleep outside with the children, and it may rain again. So far no one came, no one gave us food. We have no water, nothing.”

Meanwhile, the disaster relief coordinating body National Disaster Management Office (NDMO) in central Port Villa has said people need to patient. The experts are assessing damage, they told ABC News.

“When the national disaster management authority and the president are satisfied and the UN system is satisfied that we know exactly what’s needed where, then the button gets pushed and all the aid from different parts of the world will come here rapidly, exactly what they need,” NDMO member Joe Lowry from the International Organization for Migration told ABC News.

“That’s simply not good enough,” a doctor who went to Vanuatu to volunteer after the cyclone told 3 News, concurring with former WHO consultant in Vanuatu, Deborah Dupré.

In previous articles about the Cyclone Pam response human rights abuse, Dupré has asserted that water and food should have already been dropped to the people in desperate need. Brisbane is only a 2-hour flight away. Provisions, man-power and aircraft have all been available for a rapid response to save inhumane suffering and death.

The doctor is strongly refuting claims made and being spread in conventional news sources that aid was rushed to people in need and was starting to be effective.

Leading the international side of the aid effort for people to get exactly what they need is UNDAC team leader Sebastian Rhode Stampa. He calls the solid working relationship exists with the Vanuatu government and the response so far impressive.

“The coordination effort is being led by the government, by the National Disaster Management Office, and it’s extremely strong,” Stampa said.

That, some would say, is precisely at least part of the problem, according to a powerful JourneymanTV special two years ago, embedded in this article. Watching the Cyclone Pam response, one might well understand the Pentecost Islander saying that since elected Vanuatu government is too corrupt to provide for the people, the people need to provide for themselves.

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