You may have seen the news over the Easter long weekend as Tropical Cyclone Seroja causied widespread damage with mega rainfall and ripping winds throughout Eastern Indonesia and Timor Leste.

As you can see by the image below, it circumnavigated Rote Island as it grew from a tropical low and formed a cyclone. 

During the night of Sunday 4th and the early hours of Monday 5th of April much of the community made their way up inland to bushland on higher ground as they feared a tsunami or huge waves would wash into the lowlying beachside areas. We have been told mothers had to try to calm their babies as they waited it out in the dark bushland while the sound of metal being torn from their roofs frightened them.

We had lost contact with the island for a couple of days as we have since found out that most of the power poles and wire has come down resulting in power and communication outages. Our friends in West Rote report that there are lots of homes without roofing and many families are seeking shelter in neighbouring houses that were saved from the tearing winds.

As a result of plees from friends outside of Rote for a way to help out from a distance we have set up this page in order to consolidate all that want to help start getting some emergency lighting, some fuel supplies and food supplies as well as having roof repairs sorted.