Tropical cyclones Judy and Kevin (both of Cat4 intensity) made landfall over Vanuatu on the 1st and 3rd March 2023. On 2nd March 2023, national authorities declared a State of Emergency over parts of the country which was extended to the entire country on 5th March 2023. The National Disaster Management Office (NDMO) in Port Vila indicates that more than 271,000 (approx.) people and households have been affected by the cyclones.
The National Emergency Operation Centre (NEOC) has been activated in Vanuatu to coordinate the response. Overall coordination lies with the Vanuatu National Disaster Management Office (NDMO). And all clusters system has been also activated throughout the islands of Vanuatu to coordinate the response. These cluster systems are led by a Line Ministry and co-led by a humanitarian agency. We have a total of eleven (11) clusters group altogether:
- Health Cluster
- Education Cluster
- Food Security and Agriculture Cluster
- Emergency and Telecommunication Cluster
- Transport & Infrastructure Cluster
- Energy Cluster
- Gender and Protection Cluster
- Evacuation Centre
- Shelter Cluster
- WASH Cluster
- Logistics Cluster
The NEOC Operation Centre is based at the NDMO Office, which comprise of seven sectors that support the TC Judy & Kevin response. The NDMO director and staff were automatically assigned to be lead, and controller in these sectors, with the assistant from Staff throughout the ministry of Climate Change and staff from other departments/ministry and NGO’s, that were assigned task and responsibilities to work in this NEOC Operations during this period of the TC Judy and TC Kevin response. The National Emergency Operation Centre (NEOC) sectors:
- Administration
- Planning and Intelligence
- Finance
- Operations
- Logistics
- Communications and Public Information
- ICT and Communication