Vanuatu toll rises as cleanup begins

As relief workers struggled on Tuesday to reach Vanuatu’s remote islands, the United Nations reported that 11 people are confirmed dead and more than 3,000 people displaced by a massive cyclone that savaged the Pacific island nation on Friday and Saturday.

Many officials anticipate that number will rise once they are able to land on the outer islands of the scattered archipelago to inspect the damage there.

"We have no contact of any sort with the outer islands. The priority is to get communications up and running. It's very, very concerning that we haven't heard anything from the outlying islands," said Joe Lowry, a spokesman for International Organization for Migration (ILM). "If the devastation is as high as we think it is on those islands, there is a chance that the death toll will go up very significantly."

Radio and telephone communications with hard-hit outer islands were just beginning to be restored Tuesday, but remained incredibly patchy three days after what the country's president called a "monster" storm that hit remote outer islands with winds of more than 185 miles per hour.

The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said 3,300 people are sheltering in 37 evacuation centers on the main island of Efate and in the provinces of Torba and Penama.

Aid agencies and rescue teams from Australia and New Zealand have flown over the islands, but have so far been unable to land because of flooding.

A break in the weather on Tuesday gave relief workers a chance to try to reach the outlying islands, though access remained difficult. Most of the islands have no airports and those that do have only small landing strips that are tricky for large supply planes to navigate.

"There are over 80 islands that make up Vanuatu and on a good, sunny day outside of cyclone season it's difficult to get to many of them," said Colin Collett Van Rooyen, Vanuatu director for Oxfam. "Until today, the weather has been particularly cloudy, so even the surveillance flights would have had some difficulty picking up good imagery."

Australian military planes that conducted aerial assessments of the outer islands found significant damage, particularly on Tanna Island, where it appears that more than 80 percent of homes and other buildings were partially or completely destroyed, Foreign Minister Julie Bishop said.

"We understand that the reconnaissance imagery shows widespread devastation," Bishop said. "Not only buildings flattened — palm plantations, trees. It's quite a devastating sight."

On Monday, Baldwin Lonsdale, the country's president, said that the island nation has lost years of development progress and must "start over" after the cyclone ravaged most of the islands' buildings.

The damaged airport in Port Vila has reopened, allowing some aid and relief flights to reach the country. Lonsdale said a wide range of items were needed, from tarpaulins and water containers to medical supplies and construction tools. Those on the ground pleaded for help to arrive quickly.

The city's hospital was overwhelmed with patients, and some beds were moved outside due to fears the building is no longer safe.

"The wards have all been evacuated because of structural damage," surgeon Richard Leona told Australia's Channel 7. "We are badly needing this help. We need to get an urgent drug supply and food and also set up a mobile hospital to deal with the influx of patients coming in."

In Port Vila, smashed boats littered the harbor, and sodden piles of household belongings tangled among twisted tree branches lay where some homes once stood.

However, the cleanup was beginning, even though there were worries about food supplies after the main local market was destroyed.

The majority of residents rely on foods sold at the downtown market such as taro, island cabbage, bananas, kumara and yams for their staple diet.

Shops selling tinned food were open and stocked in the Port Vila, but most people cannot afford those foods and many were reported scavenging for bananas or fruit.

"We have bread for the first time today because the bakery has opened," said shop owner Colette Calvo.

"We have water but the situation is very bad because people don't have local food," Calvo added. "All they can eat is food like bananas that they pick up off the ground and they can get sick."

Wire services