Fiji Cyclone Damage 'Overwhelming'

(March 17) -- Fiji's leader says his nation has suffered "overwhelming" damage from a cyclone with gusts that hit 175 mph, and Australia says 17 of its citizens are still unaccounted for on the ruined Pacific archipelago where phone and power lines remain severed.

After three days of battering winds and waves, Fiji's navy dispatched patrol boats this morning to northern islands believed to be worst-hit by Cyclone Tomas, which has packed fierce winds and 23-foot wave swells. Military jets from Australia and New Zealand are also airlifting emergency supplies toward the string of islands, and Australia pledged $1 million in aid.

Australia's overseas aid program, AusAID, says it has been unable to contact 17 of its nationals who reside in Fiji. "Thirty-five of the 52 Australians registered in the north are reported as safe and well," AusAID's acting director-general, Peter Baxter, told the Australian public broadcaster ABC. "But communications are still down in the area and we expect to make contact with the others as the next couple of days progress."

One Australian survivor described his ordeal as the cyclone hit. "It was quite traumatic. You could hear the wind whistling past and ... the walls were shaking," said Max Solomon, who runs beach shacks on the Fijian island of Vanua Levu.

"There wasn't as much damage as we would have thought because we'd already put up shutters and things all over the house. The trees had all been trimmed and everything was looked after," he told ABC. "But there were other places ... that had quite a bit of damage."

Only one death has been reported so far -- a woman who drowned after rescuing two children swept out to sea. But Fiji's prime minister and military chief, Commodore Frank Bainimarama, said the full extent of the storm's wrath was not yet known.

"It is evident that wherever [Cyclone] Tomas has struck, the damage has been overwhelming," Bainimarama told reporters from several news agencies.

A spokesman for the country's disaster management office, Pajiliai Dobui, said aerial surveillance is just getting under way, but some islands are still out of contact. "So we have still not got any word about [additional] casualties," he told The Associated Press.

"Those who have experienced other cyclones say this is the longest and the strongest they have come across -- and the most destructive," Dobui told another outlet, Agence France-Press.

A New Zealand air force pilot surveying damage from above told ABC he saw dozens of people left homeless by the disaster.

"A lot of the villages in the north where it hit pretty hard, we've seen buildings that have been totally destroyed, roofs ripped off -- roofs that were ripped off schools it looks like -- and a lot of debris around," said squadron leader Karye Tamiriki.

A nationwide curfew was lifted this morning, a day after the government declared a state of emergency that will stay in effect for 30 days in the country's northern and eastern divisions. Power, water, sewage and communications have been severed on dozens of islands.

Cyclone Tomas has been downgraded to a Category 3 storm, and all national warnings have been canceled. "The good news is it's accelerating away from Fiji ... and weakening in the cooler waters," Matt Boterhoven, a senior forecaster at Fiji's Tropical Cyclone Center, told AP. Earlier, 23-foot waves were reported in the Lau island group near the epicenter of where Tomas hit, Boterhoven said.

Reports of damage are beginning to emerge from other hard-hit areas.

"Some of the houses have blown away. A lot of trees have been uprooted, some of the roads have been blocked off because the waves have picked up rocks and coral and have dumped it on the road," Julian Hennings, a spokesman for the Koro island resort of Dere Bay, told AP. Seven of the island's 14 villages have been badly damaged, he added.