Cyclone

Louisiades Battered By Cyclone Eight Lives Lost

Port Moresby, May 5

DR. J. T. GUNTHER, who returned to Moresby from Misima on April 27, praised the work done there during the April cyclone by Mrs. R.

M. Geeland, wife of the ADO at local administration headquarters, Bwagoia.

Dr. Gunther, P-NG Director of Health, spent six days investigating damage and relief work in the Loui siade Archipelago.

The Geelands are a couple in their early twenties, and have a two-year old baby- Theirs was one of the only two houses left standing. Inside it crowded Bwagoia’s 20 Europeans, and about 71 natives anl half-castes.

Dr. Gunther said that Mrs. Geeland calmly went about her work, and fed the people with hot soup..

“It was a miracle that no Europeans were killed,” said Dr. Gunther. “The cyclone struck without warning short ly before midnight on the Thursday and reached its height at 1 a.m. on Friday. By that time it had flattened Bwagoia.”

People ran from their houses in blinding rain and screaming wind as roofiing iron was flung through the air. Coconuts were tossed like balls on the wind, and coconut palms were uprooted.

Dr. Gunther said that six natives were killed when one tree crashed onto a native bouse, A huge wave washed a seventh, a native baby, from the verandah of its home.

He described Bwagoia as being “like the outskirts of Mt. Laming ton.”

Dr. Gunther and Mr. Alan Cham pion, District Commissioner, Samarai, inspected the damage. They travelled on board the trawler Managuna, cir cumnavigating Misima, proceeding east to the Reynard Group, west to Deboyne, and south to Sudest.

Damage on most islands was severe, but the Catholic Mission at Nimoa escaped almost undamaged.

Damage in the Reynard Group, how ever, was very great The cyclone destroyed all houses, palms and gardens on Brooker and Mortorima Islands in the Calvados Chain, leaving the natives without food or housing materials. Dr. Gun ther said that many of the 1,600 natives in the Calvados Chain would have to be supplied with food until gardens could be replanted and come into bearing.

Papua-New Guinea is officially

outside the cyclone area, although something close to it is not unusual in the area embracing the archi pelagoes and from Samarai to Mores by. Big blows in this area are usually euphemistically called “the tail-end of a cyclone.”

But Misima’s April blow was the real thing and the most destructive storm on record.

The Methodist Mission which suf fered heavily from Fiji’s January hurricane, also lost heavily in Misima.

According to the Leeton Irrigator, of NSW, the town’s Apex Club was addressed recently by Mr, James Charan, of Suva, Fiji. Mr. Charan, who said he was a citrus-grower in Fiji, is gaining experience on a Leeton orange-orchard. The paper says: “He stressed the fact that practically all the businesses in Fiji are controlled and conducted by the natives themselves; while many Fijians, both men and women, have entered into the professional field of medicine and law.”