Islands face water shortage

Press, 6 January 1987, Page 6

Islands face water shortage

NZPA-AAP ' Suva The Lau islands of Fiji, inundated by heavy rain and tidal waves during Cyclone Raja a week ago, last evening faced a critical water shortage. The tidal waves damaged most of the large concrete water tanks supplying the islands in the Lau group 300 km east of Suva.

The group has little spring water — some of its 14,000 people rely entirely on the tanks to catch rainwater. Others ;

have a reticulated system — but the pipes were also damaged in the cyclone. “It’s a critical problem,” Captain Metuisela Mua, commander of the National Emergency Service Committee’s cyclone taskforce, told AAP.

Emergency repairs were being made to the tanks, he said, and arrangements were also being made to send water in large plastic containers by barge to Lau.

Meanwhile, Lau people are hanging out waterproof sheets and every available container to catch rainwater. They are also praying for rain. The Lau group and islands in Fiji’s northern division were the hardest hit during the cyclone, which traversed a total of 1270 nautical miles through Fiji in its nineday rampage. Provisional damage estimates last evening stood at $U516,404,660 (SNZ3I.SM) about half of it in lost root crops on which many islanders subsist.