When Tropical Cyclone Winston tore through the tiny village of Nasau on Koro Island on February 20, 2016, it left behind more than splintered timber and twisted roofing iron.
It left silence. It left graves. It left 14 families forever incomplete.
Today, a decade later, the memory still grips 49-year-old Amenatave Kaitani with the same force as the Category 5 storm.
“It’s not an easy day to remember,” he says quietly.
“It was unexpected. It brought trauma and heartache.”
A village torn apart
Before the storm, Nasau was home to about 100 houses – modest wooden homes surrounded by farms that fed generations.
Children played in open yards. Elders rested beneath breadfruit trees.
By dawn, 90 of those homes were gone.
“Only 10 were saved from the wrath of that cyclone,” Mr Kaitani recalls.
“Our house was one of those destroyed.”
Roofs were ripped away like paper. Walls collapsed under the force of winds that reached terrifying speeds.
Crops – cassava, dalo, bananas – were flattened. Livelihoods vanished in a single night.
Families stumbled through debris in shock, searching for loved ones as rain lashed down and trees continued to fall.
Fourteen lives, from one-year-old to seventy
Nasau did not just lose buildings.
It lost grandparents. It lost children. It lost futures.
“We had 14 fatalities in the village.
“The eldest was about 70 years old. The youngest was one-year-old.”
Most died from horrific injuries caused by flying debris – sheets of roofing iron slicing through the air, heavy timber beams hurled by the wind, trees crashing onto homes.
Others drowned as the chaos unfolded, when tidal surges engulfed the village.
Two of the victims, Etonia Rayaqona and Malakai Waqa, was airlifted to Suva’s Colonial War Memorial Hospital in desperate hope of survival. They did not make it.
Among those remembered are Luke Lebaivalu, Malakai Waqa, six-year-old Inise Toganiyasawa, Lenaitasi Guicake, Iva Mataiwai, Pauliasi Kuvukibulu, Ilaitia Ratusela, Mesulame Vuwai, three-year-old Karalaini Kolosa, and Diana Ratusela – names etched forever into the heart of Nasau.
Rebuilding from nothing
The storm stripped the village bare.
“Most of our houses and farms were destroyed,” Mr Kaitani says. “We had to rebuild our lives from scratch.”
For many, rebuilding was not immediate. It took years of savings, borrowed tools, shared labour and quiet resilience. Mr Kaitani himself waited five years before he could rebuild his family home.
But while walls can be raised again, grief cannot be undone.
Gone but never forgotten
Today, Nasau stands rebuilt – stronger, wiser, but forever marked. Beneath the surface of normal life lies a collective memory of terror, loss and survival.
“Victims of Cyclone Winston from our village are gone but not forgotten.”
