Emergency aid arrives on tiny Niue
 |
Niue Premier Young Vivian.
Story Tools
YOUR E-MAIL ALERTS
|
Follow the news that matters to you. Create your own alert to be notified on topics you're interested in.
Or, visit Popular Alerts for suggestions.
|
|
WELLINGTON, New Zealand (Reuters) -- Emergency aid and medical teams have arrived on tiny Niue after the remote South Pacific island state was devastated by the worst cyclone in memory that killed at least one person.
Packing wind gusts of almost 300 kmh (186 mph), tropical cyclone Heta ripped through the island of about 2,100 people two days ago, flattening houses and crops, damaging the island's only hospital and cutting communications.
Two air ambulances evacuated two of the seriously injured, including a six-month-old boy found next to his dead mother in the rubble of their collapsed house in Alofi, the capital of the world's largest coral island.
Another man, an international volunteer, suffered a broken hip and other serious injuries. The air ambulances were due to arrive back in New Zealand later on Thursday.
"Both of these air ambulances have been dispatched because it was ascertained at the time that these injuries were life threatening," Dean Finlay, general manager of medical assistance company International SOS (NZ), told Reuters.
Niue is 2,700 kilometers (1,675 miles) northeast of New Zealand and is just east of the international dateline.
A New Zealand air force plane carrying medical supplies, shelter and water also flew into Alofi as Niueans continued sifting through the rubble.
The air force C-130 Hercules was also carrying Niue Premier Young Vivian, who was in New Zealand arranging his wife's funeral when the storm struck.
"Things don't look too good at the moment," said Vivian, who has declared a national disaster on the island which measures just 260 sq km (100 sq miles).
"I have cried for my country."
Another aid flight was due to leave New Zealand on Thursday.
"At least 20 families have been affected, lost everything and the other families on the island are just reeling from the shock," Niue government secretary Sisilia Talagi told Radio New Zealand.
Talagi said she hoped the island would be able to restore some basic services within a week. She said damage was relatively limited on the sheltered eastern side of the island although vegetation there had been flattened.
"But on the coastal side, that's where the devastation is just so traumatic," Talagi said.
Vivian, speaking in New Zealand before he flew back to Niue, urged the 20,000 Niueans living in New Zealand to return home and help rebuild their battered island.
"I will be relying on a lot of people and my own people here to be able to give moral support and some practical help ... not only cash but to come up and hold hands and work together on their families' properties and houses," he told the New Zealand Herald newspaper.
About 1.5 times the size of Washington, D.C., Polynesian Niue has been a self-governing state since 1974 in free association with New Zealand, which administers its foreign affairs and where Niueans hold citizenship.
Niue, once known as Savage Island, took the full brunt of Heta after the first major cyclone of the season sideswiped neighboring Samoa, American Samoa and Tonga.
Copyright 2004
Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
