State of Emergency Declared After Cyclone Percy
Date: 02-Mar-05
Country: NEW ZEALAND
Only 10 buildings in the northwest island of Pukapuka were intact with most, including the school where hundreds of people had been sheltering, losing their roofs.
Roads had been washed out, and there was only about a week's water supply, said chief inspector John Tini of the Cook Islands Emergency Operations Centre.
Percy, the fourth storm in a month in the South Pacific, had also caused extensive damage to buildings on Nassau, about 100 km (60 miles) to the southeast, Tini said.
"There have been some tropical cyclones hitting one or the other in the past, but that is the first time both islands were hit," he told Reuters.
One person reported missing on Nassau had been found, and the Royal New Zealand Air Force has located an American Samoan fishing vessel whose engines failed.
Swain's Island, a small outlying part of American Samoa, midway between the Hawaiian Islands and New Zealand, has been out of contact since Percy hit two days ago.
Cyclone Percy had slowed to five knots and turned to the south, according to the Australian-Pacific Centre for Emergency and Disaster Information (www.afap.org), although Tini said there were some concerns for the southern atoll of Palmerston.
The Cook Islands has a population of about 18,000 living on 15 small, low-lying atolls spread across a large area of the south Pacific. It is a tax haven but attracts tens of thousands of tourists. The island chain lies east of the International Dateline.