CYCLONE DAMAGE: The aftermath in a village on Tikopia in the Solomon Islands after Cyclone Zoe.
Reuters
Posted on 01/03/2003 8:35:52 AM PST by Dog Gone
From the comfort of this distance the problem had a simple solution: Cyclone Zoe with winds of around 300km/h had battered remote Tikopia, Fataka and Anuta islands in the Solomons some 1000km from the capital Honiara.
The obvious and immediate thing to do was to send a boat laden with food and medical supplies.
But in the Solomon Islands things are never quite that simple.
As Lindsay Duncan, head of the New Zealand police contingent in Honiara recently told the Herald: "There are a lot of things here where you think, 'It's bloody obvious, why don't you do it?' But when you dig a bit deeper ... "
In this case the boat wasn't going anywhere because the Government couldn't pay for the $50,000 emergency aid of rice and tinned food. It also couldn't pay a similar amount for the fuel although the Australian Government stepped in to stump up that money.
But while many have waited an anxious week since the cyclone levelled 5sq km Tikopia Island, where it is believed between 1300 and 2000 people live, the boat remained tied up at Honiara's wharf.
That may appear tragically inept, but such impotence is common in the Solomons.
Duncan cites the condition of the holding cells in central police station.
They are appalling. You smell them before you see them and when you walk down the dark and narrow brick corridor you are confronted with human excrement and walls turned brown with age, neglect and accumulated filth. The air is thick and fetid and leaves you choking.
The simple solution is to hose the place out. Or at least get a bucket and a mop.
"But when you dig a bit deeper ... "
The station has no plumbing so the police have to pay the Fire Service to sluice the cells out. But the Fire Service has no fuel to get there so the police have to not only find money for that, but also find the petrol.
That isn't easy either. It can be in short supply.
With an arbitrary power supply - because the Government can't pay the electricity department - some businesses and Government departments have generators, but the shortage of fuel can render them ineffective also.
This is a country where simple problems can be very complex.
This has been the way in the Solomons since the ethnic tensions between Malaitan people living on Guadalcanal Island fought back against harassment from the local "Guale".
Militants on both sides armed themselves and Guadalcanal became a war zone in 1999. Thousands of Malaitans fled back to their home island, a mere 50km away. Hundreds of Malaitans and Guale lost their lives in a ruthless conflict which included beheadings and torture, and it was only when the Malaitan Eagle Force deposed the Prime Minister at gunpoint that neighbouring countries demanded a cessation to the violence. The Townsville Peace Agreement has lessened the violence but today the Solomons is a bankrupt nation where the politics are fragile and the people are trying to adopt some semblance of normal life again.
The civil infrastructure has crumbled because the Government is stacked with "ghost workers" and those who actually exist often cannot be paid. Before the patrol boat Auki finally left Honiara there were demands from its police crew for extra pay.
Power and water supplies are erratic, and international businesses such as the Gold Ridge mine were destroyed or their owners fled during "the tensions". While no one is actually starving in these fruitfully tropical islands there is only subsistence living for many in the 4000 villages scattered around almost 1000 islands in the archipelago. The Solomon Islands is a failed state with no money to help itself.
Lloyd Powell, a New Zealander who is Permanent Secretary to the Minister of Finance, is blunt but pragmatic: "This country had run consistently on an income of $400 million and we're now running in the area of about $250 million - so the reality is you have to learn to live on that.
"The economy is growing marginally and the indicators are that there is a tentative, sensitive turnaround. People are inquiring about shop space, traders are coming in and the resources of sea and land are still there.
"The biggest time bomb is population growth and we have to grow the economy at the same pace to stop people drifting into towns."
There is money available to the Solomons, and extremely large amounts. The European Commission is prepared to release millions of dollars - US$7.8 million ($14.9 million) is sitting in an emergency fund - if it can be satisfied there is good governance and transparency.
But in a country where the rule of law can be loosely interpreted and corruption is rife (often not seen as corruption but the cultural norm for powerful people to help their own) these two conditions are difficult to satisfy.
"The priorities of the Government therefore are law and order," says Powell, "and health and education, and doing what it can to support a private sector for a provincial economic recovery."
While these goals of the medium and long term are admirable the EC representatives insist the Solomons is in crisis right now and immediate reforms are necessary. That might include constitutional changes.
But none of this is going to get a ship full of supplies to the cyclone-battered zone in the far southeast of the sprawling Solomons.
That demands immediate action from individuals prepared to be held responsible.
Right now in this country where 98 per cent of the population is Christian and many are very devout, most politicians will be back in their home provinces - many quite literally out of contact - for Christmas and New Year.
And so the boat remained tied up at the dock.
Third island
Meanwhile a third Pacific island has not been heard from since the cyclone swept through the region.
A French embassy official in Vanuatu says a helicopter has been sent from the capital, Port Vila, to the island of Mota Lava, which has a population of 1,000.
Patrick Buzaud says there is a serious concern for the people there.
Mota Lava is 200 kilometres south-west of Tikopia.
That's 185 miles per hour - one hell of a hurricane!
Maybe the solution is to simply let the remaining survivors die off and send in a bunch of worthless bureaucrats to re-populate?
Or better yet, to allow mother nature to simply reclaim the islands because nobody can afford the gas to get there?
Islanders' miracle survival
January 04, 2003
MORE than a thousand islanders have miraculously survived the fierce cyclone that flattened their remote South Pacific home, by fleeing to high-country hideaways that have protected their people for generations.
Tikopia islanders told their amazing tale of endurance for the first time when a helicopter chartered by The Weekend Australian yesterday made the first direct contact since Cyclone Zoe smashed into the island early on Sunday morning.
Overjoyed locals rushed to welcome photographer Geoff Mackley when he landed on the eastern Solomon Islands outpost yesterday, bringing with him supplies, including packaged food, from neighbouring Vanuatu.
"The whole way there I thought I would see hundreds of dead and festering bodies, but instead we were just overwhelmed with people running toward the plane," Mackley exclusively told The Weekend Australian.
"Every single person was alive and there they were, standing in front of me," said the storm-chasing photographer.
The fruit villagers usually eat was ruined by the storm and their last water supply was contaminated by salt water and only available at low tide.
"They are collecting water from green coconuts, but obviously that's not very good for them," Mr Mackley said. "They used communal toilets which were basically holes in the ground, so now there's a risk of disease."
However, it is not known whether other islanders caught in Cyclone Zoe's path were as fortunate. Neighbouring Vanuatu said yeterday it still had no word from 600 residents of Mota Lava island.
A French navy helicopter was yesterday dispatched there from the Vanuatu capital, Port Vila, to assess damage.
"Pictures from the air show problems with rising sea levels and some villages have been washed out," said Vanuatu Foreign Affairs Department spokesman Yvon Basil.
The Tikopians, who are still waiting for emergency aid to arrive from the Solomons capital, Honiara, yesterday criticised Australian officials for suggesting their lives had returned to normal after the cyclone.
The islanders told Mackley their homes and crops were completely destroyed and they would not be able to grow all the food they needed for at least the next three years.
They were dismayed an RAAF Orion aircraft had not dropped food and water when it flew a surveillance mission over Tikopia on Wednesday night.
The islanders explained to Mackley they had survived Zoe by fleeing to the high country – along paths Tikopians have used for centuries during cyclone emergencies – to shelter in mountain caves from 370km/h winds and gigantic waves sweeping the low-lying areas of the island.
As The Australian revealed yesterday rescue efforts have been delayed by Solomon Islands police, who demanded "allowances" of $1250 each before they would crew an Australian-funded patrol boat carrying emergency supplies, aid workers and a medical team.
The patrol boat left Honiara yesterday, but is unlikely to reach the 1300 inhabitants of Tikopia and neighbouring Anuta until tomorrow. Last-minute negotiations were under way last night in Honiara for the Isabella, a vessel chartered by Solomons authorities, to be dispatched after the Australian and New Zealand high commissions stepped in to speed up the rescue efforts.
At the Honiara wharves last night, James Teara was elated when The Australian told him there had been no loss of life on his island.
"Praise God," he said, rubbing the arm of his seven-year-old son, Oliver. For five days he had no idea how his wife, four other children and mother had fared. Father and son were settling down among the rows of water bottles aboard the Isabella, which was expected to leave about midnight.
The Isabella was refuelled last night after intensive efforts by the Solomon Islands National Disaster Council and the Australian and New Zealand high commissions to overcome problems with refuelling and payment to the shipping company.
The Solomon opposition yesterday slammed the Kemakeza Government's slow response to the cyclone as "inhumane". "What this Government is good at is paying out compensation and extra allowances," senior opposition member John Garo said.
"People are saying the Australian Government should have responded faster, but they did respond as soon as they were requested. What about the Solomon Islands' Government? The police issue did contribute to the delay, but whose fault is that?" Mr Garo said.
New Zealand would conduct a review of the way the crisis was handled, Foreign Minister Phil Goff said.
"When we have met the immediate needs of the people that have been devastated by this cyclone, we'll want to look back and say is there a way in which we could have responded more quickly
Um, I guess I'm fortunate that Cyclone Zoe didn't go East. Otherwise I would have to experience her firsthand..
Meega, Nala Kweesta!
CYCLONE DAMAGE: The aftermath in a village on Tikopia in the Solomon Islands after Cyclone Zoe.
Reuters
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