Cyclone Pam 'Bombs' Vanuatu, Entire Villages Razed

Super storm Pam, a Category 5 cyclone packing 185 miles and hour winds razed entire villages of Least Developing Pacific Island Nation Vanuatu, leaving the poorest of the poor like they’d been bombed by the worst storm in the Pacific’s recorded history. Unconfirmed death reports are initially at 43 in one village alone. Over 54,000 children are among those impacted. Bar a miracle, the death toll is likely to climb into many dozens. The entire nation is under a communication black-out. Potable water is more desperately needed than ever.

“Whole villages have been blown away. The homes have been absolutely, completely flattened, they’re just piles of timber, and sometimes not even that,” said Grants officer Chloe Morriso in Port Vila, where the nation’s strongest structure exist. “They just are totally decimated.”

“It looks like a bomb’s gone off,” Alice Clements, a spokeswoman for relief agency UNICEF told NZME News Service, The New Zealand Herald reports. “Tourists who have been to Port Vila wouldn’t recognize it.”

Worse than Typhoon Haiyan

Aid officials say the super storm was comparable to Typhoon Haiyan, that hit the Philippines in 2013 and killed over 6,000 people. The officials said Pam is likely to be one of the Pacific region’s worst natural disasters in recorded history.

Vanuatu President Baldwin Lonsdale said Pam’s impact would be “the very, very, very worst” in isolated outer islands but held out hope the number of casualties would be “minor”. On those outer islands, where locals live on less than a dollar a day, few if any solid constructions exist for safe shelter. Most houses are home-made out of bamboo poles, old tin or palm thatching.

“There’s nothing left, people are just sitting in rubble,” said Kris Paraskevas, a consultant in Port Vila.

In Port Vila, two confirmed deaths have been reported. Over forty ni-Vans died in one village alone. Witnesses there reported sea surges of up 26 feet (8 meters) and widespread flooding. Residents said the storm sounded like a freight train. Port Vila was strewn with debris and looked as if a bomb had gone off.

Aid workers are worried about the lack of potable water, especially for the nearly 60,000 children. Aid workers are also particularly worried about the nation’s southern island, Tana. Tana is where locals are members of a cargo cult, still awaiting survival needs from the nation they love, the United States. An Australian Red Cross official told Reuters that an aircraft managed to land there Sunday after which aid workers confirmed “widespread destruction”.

“Virtually every building that is not concrete has been flattened,” said the official, adding two deaths had been confirmed on Vanuatu’s Tana island, that’s population is approximately 29,000. Tana is around 200 km (125 miles) south of the capital, Port Vila on Efate Island.

Formerly called New Hebrides. Vanuatu survivors are in a state of shock as they watch loved ones suffer and die in the aftermath of monster cyclone Pam. Packing winds of 185 miles (300 kilometers) an hour, the storm suddenly changed course, first hitting the northeastern islands before destroying much of the capital city, Port Villa on Efate Island. The nation’s only hospital is half destroyed. Triage is being conducted there. Doctors and volunteers arre attemtping to save lives with no electricity.

Aid workers described the situation throughout Vanuatu as catastrophic. A state of emergency has been declared in the tiny state of 267,000 people over 65 islands.

Watch here for this developing story by Deborah Dupré, former resident of Vanuatu. There, as a consultant for the World Health Organization, she researched health issues with locals, including in the nation’s most remote islands.