Hamba, Solomon Islands – Jake Suri worried Friday that unless he gets help soon, his meager stores of rice will run out sometime next week and he will have nothing to feed his four children.
Suri’s thatched house in Hamba was swept away and his potato and cassava crops spoiled when a powerful undersea earthquake 25 miles from his Solomon Islands home caused a tsunami Monday that wrecked his village and killed at least 34 people elsewhere in the country.
International relief efforts picked up Friday after days of delays and logjams caused by debris-strewn runways and roads, and government inefficiency.
The airport at Gizo, the province’s main town, was open and helicopters flew supplies to places like Hamba. But other outlying areas remained beyond help and aid officials said there were reports of dysentery and expressed concern about chances for malaria and cholera.
“Everything is destroyed. We have no food now,” Suri, 33, told The Associated Press as he stood amid debris in Hamba, which sits alongside the lagoon at Rendova atoll in Western Province. The province sustained the full force of the tsunami caused by the magnitude-8.1 quake.
Helicopters carrying aid buzzed overhead, and the few usable hotels left in the region were filling up with foreign aid workers.
The first pit toilets were dug at some refugee camps, and water purification equipment was set up.
Tents, tarps, medicine and ration packs from Australia, New Zealand, the French islands of New Caledonia and elsewhere were being handed out.
Two more police patrol boats arrived before dawn Friday after being delayed for days in the Solomon Islands’ capital, Honiara, as officials struggled to find enough supplies to fill them.
The official death toll was put at 28, but the United Nations said at least 34 people were killed and government officials said they expected more deaths to be confirmed.
Red Cross official Susie Chippendale said Friday there had been reports of dysentery in hillside camps that house more than 2,000 Gizo residents whose homes were wrecked or who were too scared to return to the coast.
“It seems pretty under control at this stage, and hopefully there won’t be a huge outbreak,” she said.
Unhygienic conditions and a lack of clean water have contributed to diarrhea outbreaks, and the U.N. and aid agencies said they are worried about malaria, cholera and other potentially deadly diseases.
Frustration has grown among survivors over the relief effort and authorities in Honiara conceded it was taking longer than expected.
They said badly needed help still had not reached some of the archipelago’s almost 1,000 islands.
Hamba received a few sacks of rice Tuesday, but supplies continued to run low. Suri and other villagers were living on one bowl of rice a day per person. Their crops are gone, and their fields, poisoned by sea water, will not be productive for a season.
The village fishermen’s canoes were smashed or swept out to sea, and many are afraid to return to the ocean that has been their people’s lifeline for hundreds of years.
“Our children still get fear because it’s the first time they see the sea like that,” said Suri, who has two sons and two daughters. “In the night, they don’t sleep.” Villagers took refuge in the hills when the sea swept in. Four people were injured, but no one was killed at Hamba. Villagers now sleep in the jungle high above their wrecked homes, their clothes covered in salt and dirt.
The Rev. John Pihavaka of the Anglican Church of Melanesia visited Friday, bringing Easter-time words of encouragement.
The Solomons is heavily Christian, and while many people were too exhausted and traumatized to mark Good Friday, others observed the day with whatever resources they could muster.
