AUCKLAND, Jan 2: The Polynesian island of Tikopia has been hit by massive 11 metre high waves which appear to have swept away entire villages and completely destroyed the lagoon around the island, experts said on Thursday.

Cyclone Zoe over the weekend slammed into the Tikopia and Anuta islands in the Temotu district of the Solomon Islands and although no word has come from them two surveillance flights Wednesday revealed extensive damage.

The islands have a combined population of around 3,000 people.

An anthropologist who lived on Tikopia, Judith Macdonald, said that from the photographs she had seen, entire villages have disappeared.

“In the area where three of the four chiefs lived it’s all gone, at least 100 houses,” she told AFP.

Macdonald said it was imperative that Hercules aircraft begin airdropping food and added that ships will not be able to get cargo ashore as the lagoon has gone.

An emotional Temotu Premier Gabriel Teao told AFP from the regional capital Lata that he feared many people have been swept away.

“Whole villages have been buried and I am still not sure how many people are dead,” he told AFP.

There has been no word from Tikopia or Anuta since the storm and the Solomons government, handicapped by four years of civil war, has been able to provide no help.

Macdonald, an anthropologist at Waikato University, south of Auckland, said the photographs she saw revealed “appalling and horrendous damage”.

The photographs show wide sandy beaches around Tikopia but the island does not have beaches normally and Macdonald said she believed the fringing reef had been lifted up into the lagoon that was now full of sand and debris.

A fresh water lake, stocked with fish, had been flooded.

Maddonald said: “It is desperate that we immediately, absolutely immediately, get Hercules to airdrop food and shelter to the people.”

She said the people should not be given rice as they normally did not have pots and would not know what to do with it.

The emergency supplies of taro had probably been hit by sea water, the breadfruit trees were smashed and heavy swells would prevent fishing.

“They will have no material for building new houses. This is the worst cyclone that has ever happened in the Solomons.”

Gabriel Teao said he was more worried than ever about the fate of his people.—AFP