One person died and five, including a three-year-old boy, are still missing after Cyclone Ana punched Fiji on Sunday, just over a month after Cyclone Yasa, category 5, crossed the northern islands of the country.
Two more cyclones are already forming off the coast of Fiji, and the cyclone season still has three months to go.
More than 10,000 people remain in emergency evacuation centers after torrential rain and high winds caused severe flooding and widespread damage to buildings, plantations and public infrastructure.
Most of the country has been without electricity since Sunday and there have also been reports of widespread water outages.
The police were seen patrolling city centers in fiberglass boats while the heavy downpour, along with high tide, overloaded drainage systems. The police rescued two babies after a tree fell in the house where they were sheltering.
“Tropical cyclone Ana, the second in a month, leaves Fiji – leaving behind a difficult recovery,” said Fiji’s ambassador to the United Nations, Satyendra Prasad.
“On a personal note, for the first time in our family’s history, the boats sailed up the street to my mother’s house for rescue. We have lived here since 1921. Fiji is going to rebuild. “
Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama, vehemently outspoken about the impacts that climate change is having on the Pacific islands, said that “the predictions put yet another potential cyclone on TC Ana’s heels … that it would be three storms hitting Fiji in just over a month”.
“Today, my priority is the safety of Fijians – but the rest of the world needs to wake up and recognize why this is happening.”
The Fiji government announced a 36-hour curfew on the Saturday before the cyclone, but reversed the decision after strong public criticism on social media. The country has had to comply with a daily curfew since March 19, when it announced the first confirmed case of Covid-19.
A three-year-old boy disappeared near Lautoka, on the island of Viti Levu, after he went with his grandfather to check a boat stranded in mangroves.
The number of casualties is expected to increase as the authorities carry out damage assessments and reach isolated areas cut by floods in the coming days.
The National Disaster Management Office said 10,259 people were housed in 318 evacuation centers across the country, with 5,776 in northern Fiji, which was hit hard by TC Yasa.
Schools have remained closed since Friday, with many serving as evacuation centers, but business and public transport in Suva were allowed to open from today.
On Sunday night, as TC Ana slowly left the waters of Fiji, two more cyclones apparently formed, category 1 TC Bina approaching the northwest of the country and TC Lucas in the west of the Coral Sea off the coast of Australia.
Since then, TC Bina has been demoted by the Fiji weather office to a tropical depression, while TC Lucas is not an immediate threat to the Fiji archipelago.
There are still three months to go before the end of the cyclone season in Fiji, which runs from November to April.