Cyclone Pam survivors struggle to recover

What's it like to survive a Category 5 cyclone? Vanuatu residents tell their stories.

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This home in Vanuatu's capital Port Villa was completely destroyed as Cyclone Pam ripped through the island nation. AFP PHOTOs / POOL / DAVE HUNT

Relief, hardship as Cyclone Pam survivors battle on

Port Vila, Vanuatu, AFP – When Samson Toara squeezed under his bed with two other young men as Cyclone Pam pummelled the Vanuatu capital Port Vila, ripping off the roof and flooding his home, his thoughts turned to death.

"The cyclone sounded like a big plane flying very low, like thousands of people running on the roof," the 25-year-old told AFP at his damaged home on Tuesday.

"We were waiting to see whether we would survive or not."

Toara stayed in his flimsy house, made of timber and corrugated metal, while his wife and three young children sheltered at a nearby evacuation centre.

But as the maximum category five storm hit, it lifted the wooden beams of the house, tore off part of the roof and sent tonnes of water pouring in.

A man looks through the ruins of his home in Vanuatu's capital Port Villa

"We couldn't get outside as the door was blocked," Toara said as the ferocious winds ripped trees from their roots and sent metal roof sheetings flying.

"The rain and wind was like white smoke and it flooded up to my knee. But I told the boys don't worry about the water. As long as we survive."

Outside Toara's home, huge piles of broken branches and leaves lined roads as residents worked together in a massive clean-up across Port Vila, hacking at fallen trees with machetes and dragging branches away.

Others sunned their personal belongings, household items, and clothes on the ground near the shanty accommodation typical of the homes many occupy.

Nearby, children laid out mattresses on the flat concrete roof of a convenience store.

his photo taken on March 16, 2015 shows clothes being laid out to dry outside a destroyed home in Vanuatu's capital Port Villa.

Vanuatu is no stranger to cyclones, which are common in the South Pacific at this time of year.

But locals say Pam, which slammed past the country's more than 80 islands late Friday, killing at least 24, felt worse than Cyclone Uma in 1987 when 30 people died after two ferries sank off Port Vila.

With communications down to many of the other islands, aid agencies said the full scale of the latest disaster was not yet known.

While Port Vila residents have lived off tinned food over the past few days, humanitarian organisations assessing the damage warned that survivors in the outer islands, who are often subsistence farmers, could be quickly running out.

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