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As Vanuatu and Fiji emerge from a trail of destruction left by Tropical Cyclone Harold, Tonga is bracing for damage as the category five storm passes the island kingdom.
Key points:
- The category five cyclone is tracking south-east of Tonga today
- It has wreaked havoc in the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and Fiji over the past week
- Damage in Fiji was more severe than expected
The cyclone, with wind gusts of up to 285 kilometres per hour near its centre, passed by the south of Tonga this morning (local time).
The Tongan Meteorological Service has issued warnings for the Tongatapu and 'Eua island groups with expectations of hurricane-force winds of up to 117kph.
There are also warnings of gale force and strong winds for the Ha'apai, Tele-ki-Tonga and Tele-ki-Tokelau island groups and Vava'u, Niuatoputapu and Niuafo'ou islands.
The meteorological service said it expected a damaging ocean swell to batter all of Tonga as the storm moves south-east.
Vision posted on the Tongan National Emergency Management Office's (NEMO) Facebook page early on Thursday morning showed choppy seas battering the Tongan coast.
NEMO has advised people to stay away from coastal areas and avoid sea travel until the storm passes.
It is forecast to move out of Tongan waters and downgrade to a category three storm by 7:00pm (local time).
Fiji damage more severe than expected
Fiji has begun assesses the damage left by Harold, which moved out of the country's waters overnight.
Images and vision have emerged showing widespread flooding on the main island Viti Levu.
Residents have also reported that roofs were ripped off buildings and roads blocked by fallen trees.
Fiji Red Cross director general Ilisapeci Rokotunidau told the ABC's Pacific Beat program the initial damage from the cyclone was far more severe than anticipated.
"We didn't predict the amount of saturation there was on land. The floods came up quite quickly and into areas we didn't anticipate," Ms Rokotunidau said.
Naziah Ali, who lives in the town of Ba — located in the north-west of Viti Levu — told Pacific Beat her town was engulfed.
"The town is flooded, most of the shops that you see open on a Wednesday have been closed and boarded up," she said.
"I can already envisage how much damage there's going to be to goods and other materials people have in their shops."
She added that she saw widespread crop damage to nearby farms and sugar cane fields.
COVID-19 throws spanner in the works
The damage from Harold has made Fiji's management of coronavirus more complex. The country has 15 confirmed cases.
"We are doing all of this amid COVID-19 restrictions, so a lot of the [country's] movement has been restricted," Ms Rokotunidau said.
"One of the things we have stressed to our volunteers is their own personal safety as they prepare to [help families]."
She said she hoped the Australian Red Cross would donate personal protective equipment (PPE) to Fiji's Red Cross volunteers as they assist in the recovery effort amid COVID-19.
The Australian Government has provided the Solomon Islands with more than $99,000 of emergency assistance funds, while New Zealand has also joined Australia in providing more than $480,000 in financial assistance to Vanuatu.
While communication lines have been damaged in Vanuatu, initial aerial surveillance flights over the worst-affected islands on Tuesday afternoon showed countless houses and other buildings like churches that have lost roofs, while coconut trees have been downed and food crops flattened.
The ABC has been told the situation is "grim" with fears the damage in some places has been as bad as Cyclone Pam, which hit Vanuatu in March 2015, killing at least 15 people and leaving the country with a damage bill of nearly $600 million, more than half of the country's annual GDP.
Topics: cyclones, cyclone, disaster-prevention, pollution-disasters-and-safety, foreign-affairs, foreign-aid, pacific, fiji, vanuatu, tonga, solomon-islands
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