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Yasa pulled inland as a category five cyclone, the highest level on the scale, hitting Fiji’s second-largest island, Vanua Levu, with winds of up to 96 meters per second.
Before the storm, hundreds of thousands of people had been called to evacuate and two deaths have so far been reported, and rescue teams are now trying to reach the hardest hit isolated areas as soon as possible.
– Two deaths have been confirmed. A 45-year-old man in Labasa and a three-month-old baby, says the country’s Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama, according to Reuters.
The storm caused flooding, landslides and power outages before, weakened to a category three cyclone, moved farther out over the sea on Friday morning.
Yasa is the third category five storm to hit Fiji since 2016, when 44 people died and tens of thousands of homes were destroyed by Cyclone Winston. In April this year, 31 people were killed when Cyclone Harold stopped the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Fiji and Tonga.
Frank Bainimarama blames climate change for the increasing number of Category 5 storms that have hit the region in recent years. Yasa’s damage will cost the country hundreds of millions of dollars, according to the prime minister.
