Solomon Island Govt:effects of floods still coming in
The head of the National Disaster Office in Solomon Islands says emergency repairs to roads and bridges has allowed teams to go further into Guadalcanal Province to assess flood damage.
Transcript
The head of the National Disaster Office in Solomon Islands says emergency repairs to roads and bridges has allowed teams to go further into Guadalcanal Province to assess flood damage.
Loti Yates told Jenny Meyer that some of the main concerns are the spread of disease, restoring water supplies and clearing potentially toxic debris from Honiara's river mouth.
LOTI YATES: Teams were deployed yesterday from the different sectors; agriculture, infrastructure, health. What is our fear now, would be the secondary impacts of the disaster after the flooding. We had reports that Guadalcanal Province health authorities are experiencing an increase in some of the water borne diseases; malaria, there's also the fear of dengue now starting to show an increase. Classrooms in one of the secondary schools is totally under so many metres of mud. And so that information is slowly coming in.
JENNY MEYER: We've heard that the supply of water is a real problem there. What's happening in terms of water tanks and drinking water?
LY: In Honiara the agencies here are hiring water tankers to deliver tanks to communities. The Solomon Island Water Authority is working on improving some of the water systems that we have but they've just found that there's some damage to the main source in one of the reservoirs. That again is the key response activities that we would like to undertake. We are harvesting water from the main sources and basically we are carting water to the areas. So I think one of the key activities that we would like to do in that area is to quickly do emergency repair to water supply sources and maybe other alternative sources that we can have access to.
JM: And what about all the debris. In images we've seen there's a lot of debris everywhere, all through the mouth of the river and ships up on the beaches, do you know what's happening there in terms of clearing all of that debris and some of those larger vessels?
LY: The Honiara City Council has already made some approaches to the New Zealand government for some support to allow them to help clear the debris in the river mouth. As far as the boats are concerned maybe the Marine Department who has authority under the relevant laws that any shipwreck is their responsibility. They might already have plans to ensure that they are removed. Our concern, as far as the NDMO is concerned is to take a quick survey of those boats to see if they have fuel contained in them that may start to leak and cause environmental damage in the sea front; but those are things that are currently being looked at.
Loti Yates says more discussion and planning is needed about allocating land and building shelter for the thousands of people displaced by the flooding disaster.
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