Vanuatu President Baldwin Lonsdale is returning to his battered country from a disaster conference in Sendai, Japan.  Although he wasn’t in his country when Tropical Cyclone Pam ripped through causing death and destruction, being in Japan provided him with a media platform to call on the international for more help.

“This is a very devastating cyclone in Vanuatu.  I term it as a monster, a monster,” President Lonsdale said.  “It’s a setback for the government and for the people of Vanuatu.  After all the development that has taken place, all this development has been wiped out.”

The death toll is holding at eight lives lost, but that is expected to change as communications are restored to all of the more than 60 islands making up the archipelago.  Oxfam’s Vanuatu director Collet Van Rooyen told 4BC radio in Brisbane that an aerial survey of the southern Erramango and Tanna Islands indicate vast destruction and entire villages flattened.

In Port Vila, concrete buildings withstood the storm better but reports suggest as many as three-quarters of the capital's houses have been damaged or destroyed.  Government buildings and the main hospital have also been heavily damaged.