Transcript
The Vanuatu government extended the state of emergency on Tuesday to allow more assessments on Ambae's safety. Lava and ash spewing from the Manaro volcano contaminated water supplies, killed crops and prompted the mass evacuation last week.
Most of the island's people are being housed on the neighbouring island of Santo. An Ambae community leader James Aru says the authorities there have assured them they're welcome but people are keen to get home.
"Some of them said, well, if it's longer then we'll be able to cope with the situation and stay in Santo for a couple of months or years but most of them they still wanted to go back."
There've been calls for more portable toilets and a good water system. And the Vanuatu Red Cross says they also need 15-hundred more tents urgently. The charity's Shirley Johnson says some of the evacuation centres are housing double the number of people they should be. She says the evacuees also need blankets, adult diapers and washing kits.
"They need clean clothes, they need soap to keep them healthy. These people, some of them, they just move out here, they don't have, they don't bring anything, they just come up with like three clothes and that's it."
Shirley Johnson says there's a plan in place to provide food for the evacuees for the remainder of the month. At the moment there's enough local vegetables, rice, noodles and tinned food.
"People are coping very well. The main question that the people are asking is 'when are we going back, is Ambae OK now, is everything settled, can we go back?'"
Two and a half thousand children are among the evacuees on Santo. A provincial government official Jacques Tronquet says half of them are at secondary level and they started at local schools on Monday. He says most of the primary students will have to wait a bit longer.
"The teachers are still looking for making the environment good for them. We have the number, we can take care of them, but first we have to make sure the environment's good for them. Definitely we have pressure in that sense."
Mr Tronquet says sanitation for the evacuees is under control as more portable toilets are being brought in and the authorities are working on improving the water supply. Meanwhile the state of the volcano is on everyone's mind. Brad Scott of New Zealand's GNS Science has been helping the local authorities assess it. The vulcanologist says when he flew over it on Saturday it had calmed down, the lava flow had stopped and seismic energy had decreased.
"On Friday the lava flow was all flowing but by Saturday the lava flow had stopped flowing and the scoria eruptions from the two little volcanic cones that had grown on the island, they'd also slowed down and one of the vents was just making some really small minor volcanic ash explosions."
New Zealand has announced a further half a million US dollars in aid taking its contribution to the relief effort to just under one million dollars.
