30 Dec 2002

Disaster assessment team will travel to cyclone striken areas in two days

6:21 pm on 30 December 2002

The Solomon Islands National Disaster Council says that an assessment team will be sent to Temotu province in two days to assess the damage caused by Cyclone Zoe.

A spokesperon from the National Disaster Council or NDC says medical staff and emgergency officers will sail to the remote islands of Tikopia and Anuta which bore the brunt of Zoe.

Tikopia and Anuta, with a population of 3-thousand, were blasted by Zoe with winds of up to 180 kilometres per hour over the weekend.

The NDC spokesperson says emergency officers are working on assumptions regarding casualty numbers and damage as they have no idea as to how bad conditions on the two islands are.

He says there are not phone or radio links to the northern islands.

"We are planning to send a boat over a boat over within the next two days to actually visit the two islands and make a quick assessment report before we could look at relief supply. We haven't got in touch with the affected area because they virtually have not communication means, no radio, no whatever. So at the moment we don't know that happen there, whether there are casualties or what the damage is like."

A spokesperson from the National Disaster and Emergency Office in Solomon Islands