Post-disaster Recovery: A Critical Assessment of Housing Reconstruction Types and Features in Fiji

The Fijian villages are constantly prone to cyclone damage. In 2016, over 30,000 houses were damaged during tropical cyclone Winston, incurring a repair and reconstruction bill of almost 1.69 billion Fijian dollars. Since 1993, Fiji has had nine tropical cyclones, which destroyed much of the regional housing stock. The destruction of housing is followed by a continuous cycle of reconstructing houses after each cyclone, with no clear evidence that the reconstructed houses were complemented with any cyclone-resistant features. Post-Tropical Cyclone Winston 2016, the Help for Homes scheme was launched by the Fijian government to support reconstruction by providing affected house owners with building material cash credits. Namuaimada village, located on the northern coast of Viti Levu, was one of the villages destroyed by the cyclone. More than eighty per cent of its houses were damaged due to the cyclone. The village was mainly reconstructed under the Help for Homes scheme. The study investigates the types and features of the village's reconstructed houses and assesses their effectiveness as a cyclone-resilient. The main findings of this study reveal that the reconstructed houses were effective only in the sense of their ability to shelter their occupants; the different house types and their features, by and large, did not conform to internationally accepted standards for cyclone-resistant houses. The study highlighted the importance of implementing the five basic cyclone-resistant features in the future housing construction.