Air Force men appalled by devastation in Fiji

Press, 15 April 1980, Page 3

Air Force men appalled by devastation in Fiji

PA' Auckland Bone weary and appalled by the devastation wrought by Cyclone Wally, men of the Royal New Zealand Air Force No. 3 Iroquois helicopter squadron have returned home after a week of flying mercy missions in Fiji. They found that the wind and torrentially heavy rain had denuded forests, buried whole villages under feet of mud, and caused gigantic landslides.

“Some of the landslides made Abbotsford look like a sand pit,” said a crewman using a makeshift base near the town of Navua at the southernmost and worst-hit part of the island, the helicopter crews flew from dawn to dusk getting food, medical supplies, and clothing to isolated villages. Almost all the roads were impassable. On the return trips they brought out the sick and the lame, young and old, and even a few pregnant women.

One crewman, Flight Sergeant M. D. Burke, had visited the main island, Viti Levu, on a previous occasion but this time he barely recognised it. “It was a dreadful sight,” he said. “What were once lush green paddocks was a sea of red mud swept from inland.” In other places flat land was completely covered with thousands of tree trunks torn from the hillsides.

Sometimes the helicopters could not land when they

got to a village because of the morass. Instead, the pilot would hover or gently rest a ski on the top of the mud while the supplies were unloaded. Had it landed the machine would have been buried up to the belly in mud. Another problem was keeping the wash from the helicopters’ blades away from the flimsy shelters the islanders had built to protect themselves from the weather.