{"id":223579,"date":"2016-03-22T06:00:25","date_gmt":"2016-03-21T20:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=223579"},"modified":"2016-03-22T06:00:25","modified_gmt":"2016-03-21T20:00:25","slug":"pacific-community-assists-fijis-post-cyclone-surveys","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/pacific-community-assists-fijis-post-cyclone-surveys\/","title":{"rendered":"Pacific Community assists Fiji\u2019s post-cyclone surveys"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>SUVA, Fiji<\/strong>\u2014Two interdisciplinary teams of oceanographers and damage assessment specialists from the Pacific Community (SPC) will depart to conduct a weeklong survey of the impacts of tropical cyclone Winston on the island of Ovalau and the southern coast of Vanua Levu.<\/p>\n<p>Funded by the World Bank and planned in collaboration with Fiji\u2019s National Disaster Management Office (NDMO) and Mineral Resources Department, these surveys by SPC\u2019s Geoscience Division will assess damage to buildings, the status of water and sanitation, and the extent of coastal inundation in these areas following the devastating category 5 cyclone. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cSurveys like this are important because they provide both short and long-term insights,\u201d SPC\u2019s Geoscience Division director, Professor Michael Petterson, said. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn the short term, we can assist the government to see what needs to be replaced and help estimate the costs of rebuilding. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn the longer term, we can gain a better understanding of the impacts of events like this, helping communities know how to build back safer and stronger, and improve future coastal planning to minimize impacts,\u201d Petterson said. <\/p>\n<p>Findings from these surveys will be fed directly into Fiji Government discussions and plans to recover, rebuild, and rehabilitate these areas. <\/p>\n<p>The surveyors will cover the southern corridor of Vanua Levu from Nabouwalu to Loa and the coast of Ovalau Island in the Lomaiviti Group. These locations were selected because initial post-cyclone images show that the storm tide contributed significantly to coastal inundation and damage to infrastructure. <\/p>\n<p>It is hoped that similar surveys can be conducted in other areas that have been severely impacted by inundation, such as Koro Island and Vanua Balavu once the flow of humanitarian assistance slows.  Fiji government surveyors are simultaneously organising assessments of the north eastern coast of Viti Levu. <\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, SPC will also conduct training on Post-Disaster Needs Assessment for Fiji\u2019s NDMO, as well as SPC staff, to provide necessary skills refresher for the upcoming nation-wide field surveys. <strong>(PR)<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>SUVA, Fiji\u2014Two interdisciplinary teams of oceanographers and damage assessment specialists from the Pacific Community (SPC)&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[9893,4690,166,3151],"class_list":["post-223579","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-fiji-government","tag-pacific-community","tag-spc","tag-suva"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223579","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/28"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=223579"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223579\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=223579"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=223579"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=223579"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}