This story appeared first yesterday on the website of the Thomson Reuters Foundation. It has been edited slightly here for length. The third wave, the biggest yet, ripped his five-year-old daughter from his arms, sending her floating away, clinging to a door.
Around her, the sea churned with trees and debris, and injured people swam desperately toward a steep, brush-covered slope at the back of the beach. Koto, 53, was one of the lucky ones.
He, his wife and all four of their children were washed toward the hillside, where they caught hold of a collapsed tree. For six hours they clung there, the storm screaming around them, unsure if they were the only people still alive in the village of about Finally, when the storm died down, they crawled up the hill and found other survivors at the top. They brush things away. Worsening extreme weather linked to climate change is uprooting more people from their homes around the world, creating hardship for many.
But the psychological trauma that often accompanies displacement and loss is as much a worry as the economic costs, experts say. With millions more expected to be forced from their homes as a result of extreme weather and other pressures in coming years, finding ways to deal with the emotional burdens — not just the physical ones — will be crucial, they say.
Winston left no shortage of trauma in the South Pacific nation. Forty-four people died, nine of them in Nasau. Hundreds were injured. On once-prosperous Koro island, families lost everything — homes, clothes, photos, taro crops and long-established plantations of kava, a shrub that takes years to re-establish and whose roots are used to make a traditional drink.
