The Hurricane Thai
p. 14 · Read in the full issue
Didn't Arrive
From Our Own Correspondent
Suva, Feb. 6.
A HURRICANE that failed to materia lise as expected on February 2 has stirred up a brisk controversy over the almost-perfect hurricane warning system built up by Fiji’s weather service.
The service won universal commen dation in December, 1948, when a hurri cane was charted, plotted and forecast well in advance from the time it deve loped to the west of Rotuma until it moved out of Fiji to the south-east after devastating much of the Lau Group.
This time a tropical depression deve loped to the west of Samoa on February 1, and by the eaily hours of February 2 was moving over the Koro Sea with Suva directly in its path. At 10 p.m. on February 1, Suva, the south-eastern part of Viti Levu and several islands to the east were given a preliminary warning, and at 8 a.m, on February 2 the Lau Group was given a final warning, and at 10 a.m. the black “final” flags went up at Suva.
The immediate result was something approaching a panic in Suva, the general stampede being led by the Civil Service, which emptied itself out of the Govern ment buildings in record time. The banks put up the shutters and the big shops were not far behind them. Long before mid-day Suva was virtually a town under siege, the only open doors being those of the Indian tailors, the Chinese cafes, the hotel bars, the radio station, the cable office and the Fiji Times.
Having battened itself down to the point of suffocation, the town waited for the impending disaster. But beyond a series of moderate squalls throughout the day, nothing happened. When still a comfort able distance from Viti Levu, the storm wheeled to the south, missed Kadavu and petered out after giving the liner Aorangi, en route from Auckland to Suva, a heavy buffeting in which several passengers were injured.
AT 5 p.m. the Suva area was given the all-clear and the post-mortem set in. Critics (mainly business men whose staffs went in advance of the wind) claimed that the final warning should not have been given until it was clear that the “tropical storm” was growing into a “cyclonic hurricane.” Others, headed by people who have dealings with ships, large or small, have risen in angry defence of the weather service, main taining that Fiji’s experience of hurri canes has been too tragic to warrant any criticism of an occasional misfire in the weather forecasts.