Disaster is no stranger to island's born survivor, 76

Volcanic eruptions, landslides, earthquakes, cyclones - 76-year-old Lik Simelum from Vanuatu has survived them all.

He lives in a country that's ranked as the world's most at-risk for natural disaster by the United Nations University. But his story is remarkable even in an archipelago that has grown familiar with nature's fury. It is also filled with sadness: his father and youngest brother were both killed by a landslide.

Simelum survived yet another disaster this month when Cyclone Pam ripped through the South Pacific archipelago, destroying thousands of homes and killing at least 17 people. Simelum's outdoor kitchen was blasted to pieces and he had to sweep floodwater from his home, but he doesn't seem too worried about all that.

Simelum's story begins when he was just 11, living on the island of Ambryn in central Vanuatu. In December 1950, violent tremors began on the Benbow volcano, which turned into a major series of eruptions lasting nearly a year.

"I was frightened," he said. "Sometimes during the day there would be a lot of ash going up and blocking the sun."

He said on those days, his family would eat lunch with a lamp because it was so dark.

"There was ash on all the trees and the bushes," he said. "Sometimes you could only see the whites of people's eyes. They were black with ash all over."

The ash affected everything, he said, killing crops and contaminating the family's well water. So a joint French and British operation evacuated much of Ambryn, relocating his family to Epi island.

He said the family was at Epi only a matter of weeks when a ferocious cyclone struck just before Christmas 1951. News reports at the time said winds sunk four ships and killed an unknown number of people.

Simelum said the heavy rains triggered landslides. One slide roared through his home in the middle of the night, killing his father and his brother.

"It carried them away," he said.

His mother survived by clinging to the rafters of the home, he said, although her back was broken. Simelum had been sleeping elsewhere that night, after his family had moved him for his own safety. He said his two sisters, who live near him now, were living on other islands at the time.

He said his mother was taken to a hospital in Port Vila, and the two of them were relocated a second time, to a village on the main island of Efate, in the house where he still lives today. He said he worked first as a teacher and later as a district education officer. His mother, he said, died peacefully at an old age.

In 1987, Cyclone Uma struck. It lifted the veranda from the home and flung it about 25 meters, he said. It also caused flooding and filled the home with mud.

Then in October 2009, a powerful magnitude-7.7 earthquake hit Vanuatu. Simelum said he ran outside during the shaking.

"It was strong," he said.

His low-lying village soon got the news: it was about to be wiped out by a tsunami triggered by the quake. So he and the others left, leaving everything behind, and ran up a nearby hill. But the tsunami never struck, and they were able to return.

Life was relatively peaceful for a few years until Cyclone Pam. Simelum said he's too old to repair his kitchen now, and will leave that work to his children. But he said he expects to see more weather extremes.

"Climate change will cause more disasters in Vanuatu," he said.

(China Daily 03/23/2015 page10)