Tsunami survivors’ needs overwhelm medical staffs

Disaster officials said Wednesday that medical staffers had been overwhelmed by the number of injured tsunami survivors and feared outbreaks of disease because of unhygienic conditions and the lack of fresh water and food.

Fred Fakarii, chairman of the National Disaster Management Council, said, “The conditions at Gizo are such that these are likely things to happen unless action is taken quickly.”

International Red Cross official Nancy Jolo said the risks were growing in the largest aid camp, near Gizo, the town hit hardest when an earthquake Monday generated the waves.

“What we are experiencing right now in some of the campsites is children starting to experience diarrhea,” Jolo told Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio.

International aid has been slow to trickle in. At least 2,000 people spent a third unsheltered night on a hillside near Gizo, on a small western Solomon island that is part of the New Georgia Group.

A New Zealand military transport plane unloaded tarps, water and food late Tuesday in Munda, on the main island of the New Georgia Group, following a shipment of similar supplies delivered by a police patrol boat. Six doctors and 15 nurses reached Gizo on Wednesday.

An Australian air force transport plane left Sydney before dawn today loaded with more relief supplies, a Defense Department official said.

The United Nations said that at least 34 people were killed, raising the toll from 28, when waves as high as 16 feet smashed into the western Solomons after a magnitude 8.1 undersea earthquake. No significant tsunami waves were reported outside these impoverished South Pacific islands.

Islanders terrified by the more than 50 aftershocks that have struck the region since the quake, including several registering magnitude 6 or stronger, were afraid to come down from the hills where they had taken refuge, deputy police commissioner Peter Marshall said.

Authorities said they were somewhat relieved that aerial surveillance had revealed “no evidence of mass deaths.”

Frustrations were starting to show among the residents, many of whom fled the tsunami with whatever supplies they could carry.

“There’s no water to wash, no water to drink,” said Esther Zekele, who fled with her husband and five children.

The single sack of rice they brought to higher ground was half-empty, and no aid officials had come to their makeshift camp, she said.

Getting aid to destroyed villages farther afield could take at least two more days because of damaged roads, airstrips and wharves.

Also, many canoes and other boats were washed away or destroyed by the waves, and fuel was contaminated with seawater, Western Province Premier Alex Lokopio said.