Starvation starting in flooded Fiji
by realjack
in places around Tavua, Ba and Rakiraki there are settlements which have been without water and electricity since Sunday – they have also been cut off because of the flooding.
most of those families are rural farming families – and they rely on firewood and kerosense and gas to do their cooking
but with the houses underwater and with no ability to go out and fetch food and clean water, starvation is now starting to set in
they are completely cut off – even mobile phones are unreachable because the batteries have died for not being recharged
in the urban areas they have had no electricity since Sunday also – which means that all the food in the refrigirators are now probably bad. they also have no water.
rain is forecast to carry on into the weekend.
it appears that there is no coordination – i thought that the RFMF would have been out there from Sunday when this thing started – they should have been deployed to start work immediately when this thing started on Sunday/ Monday and it was clear where it was heading – they should have been using fibreglass to move around and go to houses in every single settlement and village under water and either take them out to evacuation centres or provide them with tinned food and bread
the weather office also did not give any warning over the radio – those people out West were not prepared for the flooding which has now happened. it looks like the weather office hid this information from the general public – the day before the bad weather hit the North there was very inadequate warning on the radio – they said there would be rain and that was it – but within 24 hours after that, when that system hit, they were talking about a “cava” (i.e hurricane) on radio fiji’s itaukei station.
we have never had flooding on this scale – in the past the rain eased off after two days and that sort of thing.
this weather pattern is new for Fiji – the rain is forecast to go into the weekend. thats 7 days and night of heavy rain non stop.
they had 300 mm of rain in Nadi within a 24 hour period – thats a massive deluge. normally Nadi averages 172 mm per month – even the best flood mitigation measures in Nadi wouldn’t be able to stop a flooding with that kind of deluge.
and its ongoing - it hasn’t stopped.
these are weather pattern variations which we simply have to prepare for – its now coming every year around about this time.
this morning its starting to rain in Suva as i am typing this post – its very overcast with heavy cloud cover overhead.
