FEARS are growing for the safety of the 3,000 residents of two of the most remote inhabited islands in the South Pacific. Tikopia and Anuta, in the Solomon Islands, are believed to have been devastated by hurricane-force winds.

Radio contact was lost after cyclone Zoe reached the maximum category five as it swept across the region, generating 200mph winds and 30ft waves.

Loti Yates, the region’s national disaster management director, said there was concern for the islanders. “For 11 hours the islands have come under direct battering from the hurricane-force winds, but we are unable to get in touch with them. We expect the worst.”

Jeff Callaghan, senior meteorologist at Australia’s cyclone warning centre, said: “A category five can really level buildings, you can be sure there will be some very serious damage. It is the worst possible cyclone. We don’t know exactly what the wind speeds were but it can be up to 223mph.”

Tikopia and Anuta have no airstrip and are accessible only by boat, with the 620-mile voyage from Honiara, the capital of the Solomons, taking up to a week. The Solomons are a chain of 80 islands 1,500 miles northeast of Sydney. The Government, which is nearly bankrupt after a four-year civil war, ordered a police patrol boat to travel to Tikopia and Anuta.

Gabriel Teao, the provincial Premier, said that it was unclear how many people lived on the two islands because there had been no census for more than a decade. However, he believed there were more than 2,000 people on Tikopia and 1,000 on Anuta.

He added that he had appealed yesterday for the national Government to ask the Australian air force to send an aircraft to fly over the islands.

“We are very worried about the people,” he said. “They have been there a very long time on that island and they are very tough people, but it was a very bad storm.”

The islanders would have used traditional methods, however, to shelter from the cyclone. Johnson Honimae, general manager of the Solomon Islands Broadcasting Corporation, said: “These people have developed a system. When a cyclone approaches they build low-lying huts and all shelter inside. The huts are low to the ground and minimise the effect of the cyclonic winds.The casualties on the islands over the years have not been huge when hit by cyclones.”

Cyclone Zoe was later said to be moving east and it looked as if would miss the island nations of Vanuatu and Fiji. The Australia Bureau of Meteorology said: “She is still a serious system but not as horrendous, as she has weakened significantly and it does not look like the winds will really affect Fiji and Vanuatu.”

A diplomatic source in Honiara said that the national Government was reluctant to appeal to Canberra for more help because of recent criticism by Alexander Downer, Australia’s Foreign Minister, of the islands’ misuse of public funds.

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