Cyclone Winston's impact on the interior of Fiji's main island

Transcript

Coastal parts of Fiji and the outer islands were, as is now being well documented, badly hit by Cyclone Winston last weekend, but what about the country's interior?

Don Wiseman spoke with RNZ International reporter, Alex Perrottet, who has been on the Viti Levu coast for much of the past five days, but today he is heading inland.

ALEX PERROTTET: I've turned to the interior of Viti Levu from the town of Tavua, we know that the town of Tavua, and Ba and Rakiraki were very badly damaged. But the question is a bit more, how extensive is the damage further inland, compared to the coast. I've been past the Vatukoula goldmine, working my way through some pretty bumpy roads that have always been fairly primitive. But the destruction is just as bad. We've just seen huge trees, just cut in half, and turned upside down. We've seen a building, it looked like a bit of a warehouse and the whole roof has flown over the road, and was caught up in trees on the other side, probably 40 metres away. A lot of this is still very very untouched. There obviously hasn't been any workers here to remove damage. It's not a shock but very very few trees with branches and leaves on them. Very bare countryside as well. And we really haven't been too far into the interior, we've only been driving off the main road for about 15 minutes. We're on our way to a village called Nandelei and we're about 20 or 30 minutes till we get to there. We don't know what to expect there because communication has been cut off, and we don't know whether any supplies or anyone indeed has been there to assess the damage.  

DON WISEMAN: Are you seeing much life around?

AP: No, I mean right now I'm parked on the side of the road and looking at a couple of cows chewing on some grass, scratching themselves against what used to be a live tree. There's a few people that have been walking up and down the roads. A little bit earlier on we passed a few stations where people had gone to collect all the fallen coconuts and prepared them and were trying to sell them on the side of the road. I don't know whether that's because the usual means of livelihood has disappeared and they're making do with what they can scrounge and what they can get, and they can make a few dollars if they can. I think still here there is that sense of, just the reaction to the storm. And people really haven't recovered yet, if anything they're expecting supplies to get here, before they can get back to their usual lives.