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World Vision team first NGO to reach remote Simbo Island - amid rising fears of a disease outbreak

07 Apr 2007 04:09:00 GMT
Source: World Vision - International
Martin Thomas, WV Solomons Communications

Website: Website: http://www.wvasiapacific.org

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Displaced people at an IDP camp from the villages of Saeragi, Vorivori and Varu which were wiped out in the Solomon Island's Tsunami.
World Vision

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World Vision' s emergency assessment team yesterday (April 5) traveled to Simbo Island, a remote part of the western province of the Solomon Islands smashed by Monday's tsunami, amid fears that many of the villages worst hit by the disaster are yet to be reached by aid agencies.

The remoteness of the region and the tsunami's destruction of infrastructure mean that potentially hundreds of villages in the western province of the Solomon Islands have yet to been reached. There are some 90,000 people that live on the hundreds of islands that make up the western province of the Solomon Islands. The assessment team has visited up to 10 villages around the Island of Gizo and nine IDP camps.

Most of the villages are smashed, there is nothing left standing, even concrete structures have been decimated. There villages are all but deserted with only a handful of people returning to scavenge what they can to survive. The rest of the people remain in the highlands, fearful of another tsunami.

"The shock has not left us yet, it has been devastating," one man from Titiana village said.

Another woman from one of the IDP camps in Gizo spoke of the chronic shortage of water. "There is only a small stream to take water from but this is not fit for drinking. Yet we are drinking it anyway, what alternative do we have," she said.

The lack of clean water and basic hygiene facilities, means there is a rising fear of the spread of disease.

"Unless we can get some supplies of clean water, sanitation and hygiene kits into these camps and villages quickly the outbreaks of diarrhea that we are now hearing about will become life threatening," Australian World Vision worker Tanya Rad said.

World Vision is dispatching 500 emergency kits - which include soap, basic cooking utensils, buckets and other basic items - from Honiaro today. It is hoped the shipment will arrive in Gizo where most of the IDP camps have been established by tomorrow. A planeload of aid including tarpaulins, blankets and ropes landed in the nearby island of Munda yesterday and is due in Gizo tomorrow.

Traditionally transport around the islands of the western province is by boat and there are only a few roads. The tsunami wrecked most of the islands boats as well as tearing up jetties.

The World Vision assessment team's trip to Simbo Island will be the first by an aid agency. There were reports from an initial fly over the island that one village had been totally wiped out and others bad affected. On Thursday the assessment team spent six hours visiting outlying villages at Simboro, Suviana, Saranghai all on the island of Gizo.

"In one village they were so desperate for food they were retrieving rice that had been washed into a swamp and were trying to dry it out. There had been several dead bodies in the swamp in the wake of the tsunami," Tanya said.

"In many parts people are simply surviving off coconuts while they wait for help to arrive."

"Many of these villagers are still traumatised by the tsunami, they don't want to return. There is a fear that if the tsunami had come at night instead of 7.39am on Monday morning none of them would have survived.

The official death toll from the disaster stands at 34 yet many of the villages visited by World Vision had fresh graves and in many case they had not been contacted by the authorities responding to the disaster.

World Vision Pacific Development Group issued a formal declaration of a CAT 1 emergency in the Solomon Islands earlier this week and has appealed for a US$500,000 - 700,000 emergency relief program.

For more information or media interviews please contact Martin Thomas in Gizo, Solomon Islands on 0011 677 794 025 or +8816 4143 8194. Photos are available. For requests please call: Andrea Russell (India) +91 99892 38223 [cell] .

[ Any views expressed in this article are those of the writer and not of Reuters. ]

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Last updated:Sat Apr 7 04:20:13 2007