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— A powerful cyclone packing wind gusts up to 155 mph pounded islands in northern Fiji on Friday, and officials feared many of the flimsy thatched homes of farmers and fishermen would be blown away.
Cyclone Daman was rated a Category 4 storm, expected to cause major flooding and serious damage in the South Pacific nation, senior forecaster Matt Boterhoven said.
People in the Lau, Lomaiviti and Vanua Levu island groups — where many villagers live in houses made of thatch and palm fronds — were advised to move from coastal areas to cyclone shelters and other secure buildings, Fiji Disaster Management Office director Joeli Rokovabe said.
"It's most likely going to be one of the severest cyclones to hit the country in recent times," Rokovabe told The Associated Press.
Landslides sparked by heavy rain closed some highways, flooding hit low-lying areas, and gusting winds destroyed trees, disaster office spokesman Pajiliai Dobui said.
"The risk is still very high," he said, noting that Daman's center had begun veering eastward away from Vanua Levu, Fiji's second biggest island.
"We're hoping that it will continue to move to the east and its intensity will ... fall," he added.
About 90,000 people live in the three island groups where the storm was expected to pass, many of them living on subsistence-level fishing and farming.
Wind gusts of up to 155 mph "are going to take out a lot of those lean-to houses," Boterhoven said.
A number of tourist resorts were at risk, he added.
"We hold very serious concerns for the safety of the people there," Boterhoven said, adding that Daman was expected to dump up to 10 inches of rain.
Fiji has been hit by 13 tropical cyclones in the past decade — the worst in 2003 when the lower-intensity Cyclone Ami hammered the Labasa region of Vanua Levu and killed 17 people.
The country's worst death toll in recent decades was 70 killed when the moderately strong Cyclone Lottie sank two ships off western Fiji in 1973.
Tropical storms are common in the South Pacific from November to April and range from category 1 to category 5. The most powerful can pack sustained winds of 130 mph.
