Joe Cropp, International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies' Communications Advisor, was with Vanuatu Red Cross Society volunteers as they helped the communities of Ambae Island evacuate amid fears of a volcanic eruption. Hear the stories of a few of the Ambae Islanders he met.
Joycelyn sits at the edge of the village with everything she can carry in two bags: clothes for herself and her two children, aged 3 and 5, and sleeping mats. Nothing else. In the next few hours it will be her small community's turn to head down to the evacuation beach and board one of the boats shuttling people off the island.
"It’s sad to leave my home. I feel painful inside," she says. “Everything I own is here. If I lose my house and property to the volcano, I don’t know how I’ll support myself and my kids.”
Like so many others I have spoken to, Joycelyn, a young widow, has a calmness about her even as she prepares to leave her home for an indefinite period, or possibly to never return. But there is also a fear about what will come next.
“I’m worried about where we will go. Will there be a safe place to stay? Will the people there welcome us?”
I had expected chaos at the evacuation beach. To quickly move 11,000 people off a remote Pacific island with an adhoc fleet of boats is no simple task. Instead, the islanders have brought a sense of calm and order.
On the hillside overlooking the beach, village communities have set up temporary camps as they wait for their turn to evacuate. Below, smaller groups cluster on the sand waiting for the next boat to come in.
At regular intervals, a small motor boat lands at the beach. Lines form to transfer piles of luggage, people wade into the water to climb on board, and moments later the boat is out and on its way to one of three other islands some four to five hours away.
Families then shuffle forward on the beach or down from the hillside, just as another boat from the small armada nudges up against the shore-line.
It's hot under the tarpaulin stretched across the deck of the military style landing craft that has drawn up on the evacuation beach. Narrow paths run between extended families who have laid grass mats on the steel deck ahead of the five-hour voyage to neighbouring Santo Island.
"It’s sad to leave everything behind," says Quendale (pictured above). “But at least I’m with my family, my village. It’s important to be together, to help each other.”
Nearby, 24-year-old Saelyndra sits on the deck with her two children and large bags of clothes, which make up everything her family has been able to carry. “All my life is now packed into six bags,” she says.
Back in the village where we met Joycelyn, all is now quiet after the community made its way down to the beach to evacuate. David, a Vanuatu Red Cross volunteer, pauses under a tree for a moment.
Like the other Red Cross volunteers from the Ambae branch, he has spent the past days helping with the evacuation. It's now time for him to take his family down to the beach, and off the island. He intends to continue volunteering at the relief centres. "It's my community, I go where they go," he says quietly.
While the Red Cross Red Crescent Movement continues to respond to emergency operations and saving lives in various parts of the Asia Pacific region, it is also investing in community resilience to disaster.
According to the Center for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED), more than 445 million people were affected by disasters in 2016. The impacts of natural disasters is expected to rise in 2017, making it crucial to include disaster risk management programmes for communities to reduce the number of people affected by disasters through the loss of homes, loss of livelihoods, injury and ill health.
Throughout this month, the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement is celebrating International Day for Disaster Reduction, with a focus on social inclusion, gender and diversity agenda under the principle of Leaving no one behind.
This principle aims to ensure that all women, men, girls and boys, irrespective of age, ability, health status, social, religious, migrant or ethnic group are given a voice, and empowered to actively contribute and participate in their communities before, during and after disasters.
Follow us on twitter @IFRCAsiaPacific for the latest updates.
