People continue to flock to evacuation centres in SI

Transcript

People are continuing to flow into evacuation centres in Solomon Islands after devastating floods last week.

The authorities say supplies are urgently needed at the shelters.

Sally Round reports.

Twenty-three people are confirmed dead and authorities say about ten thousand homeless have moved into 24 evacuation centres around the capital Honiara. That's an increase of nearly 2000 people since Saturday evening.

The National Disaster Management Office says the food rations which are being distributed are expected to run out today. And it says food, water, clothing, and toiletries are all needed urgently. Sanitation has also become a concern in the evacuation centres, due to the lack of water. Andrew Catford of World Vision says the agency began distributing its standard packs to those in Honiara evacuation centres yesterday.

ANDREW CATFORD: It is a little different to what we use in other occasions because this is an urban setting but particularly tarpaulins so people can have additional shelter, rope to help with that. But also water is an issue, so jerry cans.

 
Dr Catford says World Vision has also set up special spaces for children within the centres as its acknowledged they can be the most traumatised of victims.

ANDREW CATFORD: Even just at the camp I was at there were a whole lot of kids sitting out there doing nothing. If they had something to take their minds off it that usually makes a difference, to bring back normality to their lives, a bit of structure and take their minds off what happened in this event. We found the same thing in the tsunami.

Volunteer Service Abroad's programme manager in Solomons, Alexa Funnell, says people are in shock.

ALEXA FUNNELL: I don't think anyone anticipated this level of destruction in the city and this loss of life. In that sense it did come out of the blue. Honiara at this time of year from about November to April gets a lot of rain anyway and it can be quite consistent and so it wasn't that unusual and so I think for this to have happened now has been a real shock.

As the sun shone yesterday the search for victims stepped up, and so did fears the number of killed could rise to one hundred. Our correspondent Dorothy Wickham says establishing the numbers is proving difficult.

DOROTHY WICKHAM: We have a lot of illegal settlements around Honiara and that is one of the reasons why it is very difficult to pin down numbers at this point. And we are not very good with statistics, as you know. I don't think our last census was very accurate either. And it is going to have to come back to each family member to come forward and say 'we've got this number of people missing -we had so many people in our house on that day and on that hour. You know we have got people moving in from the provinces on a daily basis here so it is going to be difficult to pin down numbers.

VSA's Alexa Funnell says there is a lot of work ahead.

ALEXA FUNNELL: There might be a veneer of normality in the actual centre of town, in terms of shops reopening, you know, roads being tidied up, trees being pushed to the side and rubbish starting to be collected, small things like that, but you know that's just the surface. I think it is going to take many many months before things actually get anywhere near normal.

Aid workers and supplies are starting to move in with the reopening of the capital's airport on Sunday.