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Cyclone Pam: massive storm bears down on Vanuatu, with 260,000 people in its path

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cyclonepamanimation
Tropical cyclone Nathan, off Australia’s Queensland coast, and tropical cyclone Pam, near Vanuatu. Image: Australian Bureau of Meteorology/Japan Meteorological Agency

Tonight  Vanuatu is preparing for one of its worst storm predicted to hit the island later tonight. I hope that the people of Vanuatu will be safe as Pam travels through and completes her course. So far, Pam  has  destructed parts of several other small Pacific islands as she travelled down south.

The Guardian reported, the capital of Vanuatu went into lockdown as the “once-in-a-lifetime” storm bore down on the South Pacific island nation, threatening up to a quarter of a million people in its path.

Tropical cyclone Pam, a category five storm with predicted wind gusts of more than 280km/h at its core, was on track to hit the capital, Port Vila, at about 11pm Friday night, local time.

Evacuations across the country followed warnings of a life-threatening weather event bringing storm surges, torrential rain, flash flooding and landslides.

The United Nations agency UNICEF, which along with aid agencies was on the ground with personnel and emergency supplies, warned about 260,000 people were in the potential disaster zone.

Port Vila was in lockdown by 7pm local time, with sources in the area describing “panic” setting in among those who filled 12 evacuation centres, while hotels crammed with guests booked in to shelter for the night ordered them into underground bunkers.

Read more on the Guardian

http://gu.com/p/46tda/sbl

 

8 thoughts on “Cyclone Pam: massive storm bears down on Vanuatu, with 260,000 people in its path”

      1. Oh well, hopefully that will filter onto BBC News 24 at some point. Can’t help thinking there’s a bit of ‘size-of-country’ discrimination going on….plenty info on twitter though!

        Liked by 1 person

      2. Yes, strange, but you will get them all soon. They are saying here in Queensland Pam may be as big as or bigger than Cyclone Yasi which hit the North in 2011. That was massive. For Vanuatu, they do not have any concrete buildings, mostly light structures so it is quite dangerous.

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