SUVA – Fiji is likely to need more international assistance as it rebuilds after Cyclone Winston, says a government spokesperson.

Forty-two people have been confirmed killed in the Category Five cyclone and close to 20,000 people are in evacuation centres, and it is feared the death toll might rise as contact is made with the outer islands.

Pilot Neil Covert, who took aerial images of the north-east Fiji island of Vanuabalavu, said whole villages had been wiped out, a wharf had been destroyed and the island was in ruins.

Covert, who flies for the nearby resort on Mago Island, owned by Mel Gibson, said communication towers made from steel were ‘’crumpled up like scrunched up paper’’.

Vanuabalavu is the island of former Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase, who is in Suva but has seen the photos and said there were ‘’probably a thousand houses destroyed.’’

“I’m 75 years old and the damage I’ve seen, the extent of the damage, this must be the worst thing in living memory for Fiji,” Qarase said.

He said the people would need emergency shelters and the first priority would be to treat any seriously injured people.

Some of the people commenting on the photos, which have been shared on Facebook, say they can only recognise their village by looking at the church building.

A chief in Rakiraki says most of the houses in his village have been destroyed and he hopes tarpaulins can arrive quickly to keep people sheltered.

Eight people died in Rakiraki and the market has been destroyed.

The Turaga ni Koro of Namuiamada village, Usaia Rawaidranu says the damage was terrible.

He said there’s 78 houses damaged out of 105 houses, just in Namuiamada.

“Now we need some food, we need some tarpaulins, tents or what to make shelter because plenty of my population – now they can’t sleep. I have got just six habitable houses in my village.

“Those six houses, my population 544, they all fit in those six houses. That is the condition that we are having now.”

Rawaidranu said he had told his people not to wait for the government, but to start working to build shelters already.

A mother of four children in an evacuation centre in Fiji’s Rakiraki said families were helping each other until government assistance came through.

Miliakere Dakuitoga is at the Penang Sangam High School with seven other families. They are staying in the hall as there is extensive damage to parts of the school.

She said they were waiting for food to arrive.

“We are just trying to help each other with the food and the water. Since the relief from the government is not that quick, so we are just helping each other with whatever we have.”

Dakuitoga says she was shaken and her house is a “disaster”, but she is grateful to be alive.

People in rural areas have complained that government relief supplies have not yet reached them, several days after the storm hit.

But the director of Fiji’s disaster management office Akapusi Tuifagalele said people who needed food and water after cyclone Winston should go to evacuation centres.

He said distributing aid on a house-to-house basis was logistically too difficult.

“It is a centre that will allow the ease of access for those who are actually affected. We have evacuation centres available that they can go to so that they can be assisted from there for the time being before they go back to their respective homes.”

New Zealand, Australia and France have responded with a number of relief flights, and New Zealand has deployed two Navy ships to Fiji to assist.

The United States, China, India and the European Union have also offered financial assistance.

Ewan Perrin, the permanent secretary of the Department of Communications, said the scale of damage was immense, and more aid will be needed.

“I think we will definitely need more international assistance.

“As we do those more detailed assessments, and as we look into the medium to longer term, we’ll be looking towards our friends in the international community for some more support as well,” he said.

- PNC sources