By Austin Bowden-Kerby | Project Facilitator
Dear Friends,
The Fiji crisis is like none other in its history, with 24,000 homes destroyed or made unlivable, and with 54,000 homeless people now living in evacuation centres and many thousands more struggling to survive in isolated communities without adequate shelter. One week on, some remote commmunties have still not been reached by relief workers. The direct death toll is 43, with many injured. Additional casualties are occurring due to the lack of power to the hospitals and a lack of access to emergency medical care.
For the three villages we are targeting with this effort, 2 meter waves came into the villages, taking the first rows of houses and essentially erasing them... the 300km+ winds damaged or destroyed many or most of the others. Yanuca village is the worse affected by the winds and waves, with a report just in of all children sleeping on the floor of the only unaffected house, and all of the adults sleeping out in the open- it truly looks like a tornado went through the village as everything disintegrated. There was one death in the village due to the storm. Looking at the severe damage, it is amazing that there was not more, but there were many injuries.
We bought a chain saw yesterday and sent it to Uluibau, and on Monday we will send chain saws to Daku and Yanuca villages, temporarily borrowing from other projects. We will also go over to inspect the sites next week, so that we can ensure that the most urgent needs are addressed. I will bring back some on-the-ground photos and post another report.
Access to temporary shelter and clean drinking water and food are the most urgent needs. We are coordinating with government and other NGOs on this and on reconstruction, and on longer-term food security and drinking water needs. Once stable, these communites will become the focus of our food security and environmental restoration programs: "Happy Chicken" and Coral Gardening (see our other Global Giving Projects).
On the first two days since launching this plea, we have received 30 donations totallying US $900. This is very encouraging!
Project reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.
If you donate to this project or have donated to this project, you can recieve an email when this project posts a report. You can also subscribe for reports without donating.
