Mopping up continues after Fiji floods
Updated
In Fiji more rain is forecast but not in the record proportions seen over the past two weeks.
Presenter: Geraldine Coutts
Speaker: Major Neumi Leweni, spokesman for the military/interim government; Dr Tharid Ali, Medical officer, Western Division; Sainiana Waqainabete, Principle Information officer, Ministry Works, Transport and Public Utilities, Rajendra Prasad, Director of the Fiji Meteological Services
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COUTTS: Businesses are now starting to mop-up and salvage what they can from knee deep mud. Some families have moved back to their homes, but nearly 7,000 people remain at one of the evacuation centres. Around 150 military personnel have been assigned to clean up duties, most of them have been deployed to Nadi. Some media outlets are reporting that a curfew is now in place to stop scavenging and looting.
Major Neumi Leweni, the interim government's media spokesman, says the curfews have been misinterpreted.
LEWENI: I think there's a mis-interpretation in curfews. It's actually restriction of movements. It is the restriction of movements of people into the town area.
COUTTS: So you have got roadblocks preventing people from going into town?
LEWENI: Yeah, restricting the people. There are people who are allowed in and some not allowed in, so it's just a restriction of people moving in and out of the town area. It's not really a curfew as such.
COUTTS: Nearly 7,000 people have been accommodated at one of 104 evacuation centres spread of the northern, western and central divisions.
Dr Tharid Ali, with the Western Division Health Service, says they have completed health assessments at each of them.
ALI: As far as the sanitation and hygiene are concerned at the evacuation centres, we have found no problems. The sanitation standards are good, just getting a few of the evacuation centres, people are suffering from viral illnesses, the upper respiratory tract infections and our medical teams have treated these people at the moment.
COUTTS: A cautionary warning has been issued by Dr Ali to prevent a feared outbreak of typhoid and air and water born diseases.
ALI: As far as our disease control efforts are concerned, we are issuing warnings to people to boil all their drinking water at the moment and the other good news is that we have received water purification tablets from UNICEF, which we have distributed amongst the people staying at the evacuation centres as well as to the communities which have been affected, the water supply has been affected.
COUTTS: As much of the infrastructure, particularly Nadi and Bar has been devastated, the good news is that most of the water pipes have been repaired with water on tap now available in many areas.
Sainiana Waqainabete, principle information officer with the Ministry of Works, Transport and Public Utilities says a high percentage of water supplies have been restored.
WAQAINABETE: As of today, we've managed to restore 85 per cent of water supply to the affected areas, that basically runs across the islands of Viti Levu, including those in Vanua Levu. Along Viti Levu, the only exception at this stage is the people of Ba and the population in the area is around 20,000 people.
For Ba, we expect water to come on through the pipes at least by this evening for 30 per cent of the population and for the remaining 70 per cent, we are hoping that normal water supply will resume within a week.
COUTTS: In every cloud there is a silver lining. Before Christmas, the Electricity Commission was concerned at the low level of water in the dams affecting its ability to maintain power supplies. But the dams were filled to capacity with a record 1,000 millimetres of rain which fell in a week, normally a three month quota in a normal rainy season.
The Bureau of Meteorology is forecasting more rain over the next two weeks, but not in the same amounts which has caused the widespread flooding.
Director of the Fiji Meteorological Services at Nadi, Nadi Rajendra Prasad, says the criticism of the infrastructure being inadequate and not coping with the torrential downpours is unfair.
PRASAD: Really with the rainfall intensity, the actual amounts were so much that any drainage system, any river or hole no matter how deep it may have been with raging activity that went ahead, it would not be able to sustain that kind of rainfall.
