Huge Cyclone Hits Solomons

VOA News ^

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Huge Cyclone

Hits Eastern Solomon Islands
VOA News
30 Dec 2002, 06:44 UTC

In the South Pacific, all contact has been lost with three small islands that were hit by a massive cyclone with winds gusting over 300 kilometers per hour.

Government officials in the Solomon Islands asked Australia to send a search plane to fly over the remote islands, which have a population of about 1,000. A Solomon Islands patrol boat also has been ordered to head for the territory, Tikopia, Fatala and Anuta islands, at the eastern edge of the Santa Cruz group in the Solomons.

Nothing has been heard from the isolated islands since Cyclone Zoe passed directly over them on Sunday.

The cyclone, which had sustained winds close to

200 kilometers per hour and wind gusts measuring over 300 kilometers per hour, would have caused major flooding. When Zoe passed over the islands, it was rated as a maximum-strength, category-five, capable of the

highest level of destruction and damage.

Radio communication is the normal means of contact but it was thought that the few radio antennas on the islands must have been flattened by high winds.

Zoe changed course to the southeast and weakened slightly after it hit the Santa Cruz islands. The storm is now expected to bypass the island nations of Vanuatu and Fiji.

Some information for this report provided by AFP and Reuters.

[Consort]