A cyclone that struck Fiji in early 1978 brought strong winds to Suva and a big crop of bouncing babies.
They kept staff nurse Sister Mereula Thomas busy at the Anderson Maternity Unit in Suva during Cyclone Bob.
According to The Fiji Times of Friday, January 6, 1978, the Colonial War Memorial Hospital recorded an “unusual large number of admissions and births” during the wild and windy hours of Wednesday night and Thursday morning.
“We do not know why, perhaps the mothers thought that if they did not get to hospital while they had the chance the cyclone could cut them off and they might not make it at all,” a hospital spokesman said.
A total of 16 women were admitted to the labour ward. Some came in at about 8pm on Wednesday night, another at 10.15pm, and when the winds were really high and rain was pouring down, more came down at midnight and at 1am.
Around a dozen babies were delivered at the maternity unit during the stormy night. Meanwhile, Cyclone Bob ripped apart a two-bedroom wooden house at Wailoko, near Sabeto in Nadi, killing a sleeping man and then hurling his body seven chains away.
Leaving a trail of destruction and a death in Fiji, Cyclone Bob headed for south New Hebrides and New Caledonia with increasing force. Latest satellite information indicated that winds at the cyclone’s centre had reached 75 knots.
At least two other families in the west were left homeless. The body of Semi Cagilaba, 28, of Waya Island in the Yasawas, was not discovered until daybreak, seven chains away in a drain, by a search party alerted by Cagilaba’s cousin, Aminiyasi Navatu of Wailoko.
Cagibula and Navatu, 16, had decided to stay at the homestead for the night despite warnings. Soon after midnight, a whirlwind, came hurtling down the mountain range, uprooting everything in its path for several hundred chains.
The whirlwind uprooted five wooden houses at Waisea Orchid Nursery belonging to actor Raymond Burr, several huge trees and overturned and twisted wire fencing surrounding the nursery, before splintering the house that Cagibula and Navatu were sleeping in.
