SUVA, (Fiji): Super cyclone Yasa flattened entire villages as it tore through Fiji, aid agencies said Friday, with a baby among two confirmed deaths and rescue workers racing to the worst-hit communities. Yasa made landfall late Thursday as a top-of-the-scale Category Five cyclone, lashing Fiji's second-largest island, Vanua Levu.
Climate change has made cyclones stronger and more frequent, with Yasa the third maximum-strength storm to batter the Pacific island nation in five years.
It triggered floods, landslides and blackouts before moving out to sea early Friday, where it rapidly weakened to a Category Three system.
Zalim Hussein of Savusavu, a small town of a few thousand people on Vanua Levu, said he feared for his life sheltering at home in the dark as screeching winds ripped apart houses around him.
"I could hear roofs of neighbouring houses flying, trees falling and branches breaking outside and big waves crushing on the shore," he told AFP.
"We were all scared for our lives and I thought at one point we'd lose our home. In my 65 years, I've never seen anything like this."
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