Vanuatu Capital In Ruins
Monday, March 16th, 2015March 16, 2015
On the evening of March 13, Vanuatu, a small nation made up of 80 islands in the South Pacific Ocean, was hit by a huge tropical cyclone named Pam. (Such storms are known as hurricanes in the Atlantic.) Speaking from a conference in Japan, Vanuatu’s president, Baldwin Lonsdale, described the storm as “a monster.” It is one of only two Category 5 storms in the Pacific to make landfall in a populated area since such weather events have been recorded. The other such storm is known as the 1959 Mexico Hurricane, which killed around 1,000 people. A Category 5 storm, the highest category, has very high winds and causes extreme damage to buildings, often flattening everything in its path.
It has been difficult for outsiders to know the situation in Vanuatu over the weekend, as communication systems were knocked out by the storm. A pilot flying over Vanuatu stated that it looked like the capital of the island nation, Port-Vila, which is home to about 47,000 of the nation’s population of around 260,000 people, has been completely destroyed. Aid workers began the attempt to get to Vanuatu yesterday to start cleanup.
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