Australia is sending urgent assistance to the Pacific nation of Vanuatu after a 7.3 earthquake struck near the capital city of Port Vila yesterday. The Red Cross is saying 14 people were killed by the initial quake -- with locals fearing many more have died - describing a "mass casualty event". The Disaster Assistance Response Team’s task force leader Douglas May says Vanuatu's emergency services are ‘overwhelmed’.
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00:00What you can see behind me is the Royal Australian Aircraft C-17 plane and just moments ago we
00:08saw dozens and dozens of personnel walking up those steps and hours before that there
00:13was supplies, Australian aid that was packed onto this plane and this is going to form
00:18part of Australia's Disaster Relief Taskforce.
00:22Now really we're expecting this plane to take off at any moment, if you see those stairs
00:26go up or some sudden loud movement it means it's go time and it's heading off to Port
00:31Villa.
00:32Now we were speaking to the leader of the taskforce earlier today about the types of
00:36personnel who are heading off on this job, he said ordinarily they're often working for
00:41the Queensland Fire and Emergency Services, the likes of firefighters, paramedics, doctors,
00:48volunteer, engineers, also some canine handlers, he said that this is a very sophisticated
00:54team and that they will be helping the local team on the ground, let's take a listen to
00:58what he had to say about what they're expecting they're going to walk into.
01:02They're overwhelmed with work and also with their knowledge on how to manage this kind
01:09of collapse, these heavy concrete building collapses are not something that people see
01:16every day, hence their specialist teams around the world that do it and it's not something
01:20that they're used to doing so they're absolutely doing their best right now to work on those
01:25sites but they're very much looking forward to us arriving.
01:29Now those relief teams expecting tough days ahead, Isabella.
01:35That's right Ros, when we were talking to these people just a little earlier they said
01:40that they have been in contact with people on the ground, that they are aware of live
01:45rescues that need to happen so that means that there are individuals who they believe
01:49are still alive within collapsed buildings, they said their first priority as soon as
01:54they get on the ground is going to be to try and save those people and they do view this
01:58as a life-saving mission, they said after that unfortunately it may be the task of trying
02:03to locate the deceased and that is where those detection dogs will come in, they can scale
02:09and search very large areas and after that they will be helping locals providing some
02:15basic services like water sanitation and probably a whole lot of other services as well, they're
02:20expecting that this will be a difficult task, already it's been logistically challenging,
02:25it's been hard to get into the country, there was some damage at the airport, it's taken
02:29some time before it's opened up and still now it's closed to commercial aircraft and
02:33it's just military planes that are able to go in so they're expecting difficult days
02:37ahead and it's already been pretty busy getting up to this point and at any moment we should
02:42see that plane take off, Ros.
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