Cyclone Pam: Vanuatu death toll rises, approx 103,000 affected

A handout photo provided by UNICEF Pacific on 15 March 2015 shows a resident clearing debris from his home in Vanuatu

                                                   Cyclone Pam's projected path



 

Children among debris while residents deal with the damage to their homes in Seaside, near the Vanuatu capital of Port Vila. Photograph: Chris McCowage/Australian Red Cross/AFP/Getty Images

Confirmed deaths in Vanuatu currently number eight, with a further 20 people injured. This does not include any casualty figures from outlying islands and  this number is expected to rise.

Aid agencies reported that around 90% of houses in Port Vila have been destroyed, many people displaced, and schools ripped apart.

An estimated 103,000 people in  Vanuatu have been affected by cyclone Pam, with thousands more blighted in nine countries across the Pacific, according to figures from the New Zealand Red Cross.

The aid agency says it has not yet been possible to make contact with the outer islands because power and phone lines are down.

It describes the disaster as the strongest storm to make landfall since Typhoon Haiyan hit the Philippines in November 2013, killing at least 6,300 people in that country alone.

Aurelia Balpe, head of delegation for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies in the Pacific saisd