TROPICAL CYCLONE MICK

We began watching Tropical Cyclone Mick on the 14th of December. By that time it was already a category 2 storm and was bearing down on Fiji. It is the first cyclone of the storm season.

It is extremely difficult to measure the strength, wind speeds, and pressures of cyclones in the middle of the Pacific. Weather monitoring stations are few and far between, and we don't have "storm tracker planes." Satellites can track them, but that only provides a historical picture of the path it has taken.

My experience with gulf coast hurricanes has been helpful, but I’ve had to learn to think in reverse. Tropical storms in the South Pacific turn in a clockwise direction (opposite from the northern hemisphere). That means the wet or dirty side of the storm is on the left side, not the right. However, I’ve been able to use a combination of tools to provide some elementary storm path predictions. Such was the case with “Mick.” Each morning I would check its location and speed, then chart a path on Google Earth, to predict when and where it would be. Mick was uncommonly predictable in the path it followed, but caught everyone off guard in terms of timing and effect. Mick hid the coast of Fiji 6 hours ahead of all predictions, and instead of dumping a lot of rain as anticipated, the greatest damage was from the high winds.

Conversely, as Mick departed the main island of Viti Levu the greatest damage was from flooding on the small off-shore island of Mbengga, southwest of Suva.

Fiji is currently under the rule of the military – the result of a coup that took place three years ago. The Commodore has divided the country into four divisions. The Eastern Division suffered the most damage. The greatest lost overall however, was the lost of family gardens and root crops that were destroyed either by the high winds or the salt water coming ashore.

During a private meeting with the Fiji DMO Director, however, we were told that the cyclone was a blessing in disguise. The country has been in the middle of a serious drought, and the rain that the storm brought filled the hydroelectric plant reservoirs. Thus the money the government will not have to spend on diesel fuel for electricity will more than offset the damage caused by the storm. Therefore it is the individual subsistence farmers that will suffer the most.

The storm did claim the lives of two young victims, a teenager who was swept away by floodwaters and a boy who was killed by a falling tree in Savatu Village in Nadarivatu, while two others were swept away by flood waters.

We have been conducting daily conference calls with our local team, church leaders in Fiji, and our counterparts in Salt Lake City. Working with the Fiji DMO, we provided emergency relief supplies to the temporary shelters and also purchased chain saws for the government and community volunteers to use to facilitate the removal of debris. In addition we purchased water containers for one village that lost its source of clean water.

Local church members in the areas that were not affected also provided assistance to the impact areas. This assistance was mostly in the form of clothing drives and clean-up teams.

The lost of family gardens and small farms due to high winds and salt water will effect these people for many months.

Some of the “lost crops” can be salvaged for immediate use, but after that they will have to plant and then wait for the new crop.

Low lying areas were flooded, higher areas were damaged by the winds. More than 4,000 people had to evacuate to temporary shelters until the flood waters subsided.

THE VANUATU VOLCANO

A couple of days after John and Shona came for their visit the volcano on a small island north of the main island of Espiritu Santo became very active. It had been smoking and threatening for quite some time, but now it began to spew mud and ash and caused the local rains to turn acidic.

We were able to get approval for an emergency relief project to help the villagers who had to be evacuated. The Vanuatu Disaster Management Office (DMO) decided that the villages in danger would have to be evacuated. Their plan was to have each relocated family hosted by another family on the opposite side of the island which shared the same ethnic and cultural beliefs. This “one family at a time” approach took a lot of extra effort, but it proved to be a very successful plan. Each evacuee family was matched up with a host family. The government then allocated additional land to the host family so they could plant more crops to support their family and the hosted evacuees. Detailed census information was collected for each host family and for each evacuee family. No one was lost or left out. All were accounted for and taken care of.

In addition to providing emergency relief food to assist in tiding them over until their new gardens can begin to produce, our emergency relief project also provided farm and gardening tools for the evacuees, and water storage tanks for the host villages. We have been conducting regular conference calls with our in-country contacts, church leaders, village leaders, and others to coordinate the needs and resources of the evacuees and the host families. The situation is beginning to stabilize now, so we won’t need to contact them again until next week.

This is a picture of the beautiful island of Gaua under normal conditions.

This is a picture taken by someone else of the Gaua Volcano as it started to increase in activity. (See credit of photo)

Here are the local members of the LDS Church who assisted us in distributing food and supplies to the evacuees.

This is a picture of our local relief workers with some of the evacuees.

More evacuees with their host families, some of whom were also LDS relief workers.

These are members of the LDS Church on the island of Gaua, Vanuatu.

These men are the priesthood leaders of the Gaua Branch of the LDS Church.

Here we are delivering a water storage tank to one of the host villages. With the additional village members (evacuees) they need to be able to capture and hold more rain water.

These are the village chiefs from both the east and the west sides of the island. They met to work out the evacuee/host-family details.

This is a picture of the headquarters for host-family coordination.

Here are some evacuees waiting to see an airplane land and take off. They don’t have a landing strip on their side of the island.

This is a picture of the Red Cross and Vanuatu Disaster Management Centre. We coordinated all of our relief work with this group.

Smoke and ash billowing from the volcano.

This is a picture of some volcanic ash that built up on a leaf.

Finally, a picture of the LDS Church branch president collecting census information from members of the church who were host families. The information he gathers is turned into the DMO.

WE'VE GOT MAIL - I MEAN, COMPANY!!

Yay, we were so excited to have John and Shona come to visit us! They were able to get away for a trip to New Zealand, which, of course, included the interminable hours both coming and going. Shona's sister Laura stayed with the kids so they could have this little get-away. Thanks, Laura!!

We kept on the go and showed them many of our favorite places. They were good sports and let us haul them up and down hills, through the bush, onto beaches and rocks, and endured several long car rides. John was our chef nearly every night and we enjoyed his making us stuff we were really hungry for!

We had our cameras at the ready and documented their visit on location.

On a bluff above the Taman Sea

On a volcanic hill across from the Auckland skyline

At a cave on the beach of the Auckland harbor

Inside a fortification on the coastline guarding the Auckland Harbor

Umm, not paying much attention to the view

or the Party Tree on the location of The Lord of the Rings set

The two little American Hobbits in the Hobbit Hole

The Sky Tower towering over them

In front of the New Zealand Temple in Hamilton

Did you see a pattern developing among this couple????

Sad to see them go, but we really enjoyed having them here and had a nice time with them. Hopefully it will be a trip they'll remember for a long time.