Joy at finding mothers alive

TANNA – Desperate Vanuatu residents scoured the remains of their homes in search of missing family members on Tuesday, four days after deadly Cyclone Pam smashed into the Pacific island chain.

While the recovery effort was well underway in the capital Port Vila, power and communications blackouts meant some of those separated from their loved ones on the outer islands have been relying on rumour and hope alone.

Favi Nagin, a 27-year-old-student, was studying in the capital when the storm struck.

Having received no word from her family on the island of Tanna, some 200km away, she took the nerve-wracking journey Tuesday on a plane carrying aid workers to find out if her two-year-old son and elderly mother had survived the storm.

Nagin – who travelled on the back of a truck with NBC News from the island’s airport to her villge community on Tanna – saw countless ruined buildings along the dirt road.

She was overcome with emotion when she arrived to find her own home still standing.

“This is a miracle in my life,” she said. She also found that her mother, Doneth Alpi, was uninjured.

Just a few miles from Nagin’s family, Jonas Sumu travelled to the home of his mother, Mary Johnson, with no idea if she was alive or dead.

Picking his way through fallen branches and tangled undergrowth, he found her sitting on the ground, surrounded by piles of metal that once made up her fragile home.

On seeing her son, Marybroke down in tears and the pair held hands and sobbed. Sumu then took NBC News to the mess of metal and bricks that used to be his local church.

“That’s where we meet all the time,” he said. “Our lives are here, for the community, family.”

Despite the devastation, Sumu said he was simply relieved to find his mother alive after days of not being in communication with there.

“We didn’t know if they are alive, or they didn’t know if we are alive,” he said. “I’m very happy when I see her, that she’s still alive.”