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Islanders Tell How They Survived Cyclone Zoe By Johnson Honimae HONIARA (Reuters) - All the inhabitants of a South Pacific island battered by a fierce cyclone have survived by fleeing to mountain shelters, according to a photographer who has landed on the island. He said it appeared no one had died on Tikopia, where it was feared hundreds might have perished after Cyclone Zoe tore through the remote eastern Solomon Islands on Sunday morning. Tikopia is the biggest of the affected islands which are home to around 3,700 people. The situation on Anuta and other islands hammered by the...

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...

December 31, 2002 Two Pacific islands 'lost' after cyclone From Roger Maynard in Sydney FEARS are growing for the safety of the 3,000 residents of two of the most remote inhabited islands in the South Pacific. Tikopia and Anuta, in the Solomon Islands, are believed to have been devastated by hurricane-force winds. Radio contact was lost after cyclone Zoe reached the maximum category five as it swept across the region, generating 200mph winds and 30ft waves. Loti Yates, the region’s national disaster management director, said there was concern for the islanders. “For 11 hours the islands have come under direct...