After Pacific cyclone, Vanuatu president appeals for ‘lending hand’

Vanuatu’s president made an emotional appeal for international assistance on Saturday after his island nation was hit by a calamity of a cyclone, wreaking devastation in what is feared to be one of the region’s worst weather disasters. Aid workers say eight people are confirmed dead in Vanuatu and the death toll is expected to rise much higher. Aid agencies were scrambling for information and preparing to send teams to Vanuatu, whose main island is home to more than 65,000 people, with a UN disaster assessment and coordination team expected to arrive late Sunday. Residents in Vanuatu hunkered in emergency shelters for a second straight night Saturday, aid workers said.

I stand to appeal on behalf of the government and people of Vanuatu to the global community to give a lending hand in responding to these very current calamities that have struck us.

Vanuatu’s president Baldwin Lonsdale

Scientists have said it’s nearly impossible to attribute any single weather event to climate change. Still, the Category 5 cyclone – the worst to hit the archipelago since Cyclone Uma left 5,000 people homeless and one man dead in 1987 – has once more raised concerns about the readiness of Pacific island nations to respond to severe weather events exacerbated by rising temperatures and sea levels. The Pacific region has been one of the areas most affected by changes in global temperatures in recent years. Countries in and around the Pacific, including China, Japan, Vietnam, Thailand, the Philippines, and Australia, have also experienced the most tropical cyclone strikes since 1970, a Christian Science Monitor report found.

The Pacific is fighting for its survival. Climate change has already arrived.

Christopher Loek, president of the Marshall Islands, a tiny archipelago near the equator

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