By Catherine Walbridge
WELLINGTON, Jan 8 (Reuters) - Emergency aid and medical teams arrived on tiny Niue on Thursday after the remote South Pacific island state was devastated by the worst cyclone in memory.
Packing wind gusts of almost 300 kmh (186 mph), tropical cyclone Heta ripped through the island of about 2,100 people two days ago, flattening houses and crops, badly damaging the island's only hospital and cutting communications.
One person was killed, a woman whose house was crushed by a giant wave that hit Alofi, the capital of the world's largest coral island. The woman's 19-month-old son was found lying next to her, clinging to life.
The boy and another seriously injured person were evacuated to New Zealand by air ambulance.
The child had been given oxygen with a hand pump for 10 hours and was on an intravenous drip that was nailed to a plank of wood he was lying on when medics arrived. He was in critical but stable condition in a New Zealand hospital.
"It was a phenomenal effort to keep the little boy alive," Dean Finlay, general manager of medical assistance company International SOS (NZ), told Reuters.
A 38-year old man with hip injuries was also evacuated to the New Zealand city of Auckland.
Niue is 2,700 km (1,675 miles) northeast of New Zealand and is just east of the international dateline. The storm hit the island on Monday, local time, and the air ambulances arrived there on the island's Wednesday.
A New Zealand air force plane carrying medical supplies, shelter and water also flew into Alofi as Niueans continued sifting through the rubble.
The air force C-130 Hercules was also carrying Niue Premier Young Vivian, who was in New Zealand arranging his wife's funeral when the storm struck.
"Things don't look too good at the moment," said Vivian, who has declared a national disaster on the island which measures just 260 sq km (100 sq miles).
"I have cried for my country."
A second air force plane was due to leave New Zealand with Niuean members of parliament and community leaders on Friday.
"REELING FROM SHOCK"
Niue's High Commissioner to New Zealand Hima Takalesi described Heta as "the mother of all cyclones".
"The village of Alofi South has virtually disappeared from the face of the earth...All that's left is just nothing, just skeleton," he told Radio New Zealand from the island.
Niue government secretary Sisilia Talagi hoped the island would be able to restore some basic services within a week.
Vivian, speaking in New Zealand before he flew back to Niue, urged the 20,000 Niueans living in New Zealand to return home and help rebuild their battered island.
"I will be relying on a lot of people and my own people here to be able to give moral support and some practical help...not only cash but to come up and hold hands and work together on their families' properties and houses," he told the New Zealand Herald newspaper.
About 1.5 times the size of Washington, D.C., Polynesian Niue has been a self-governing state since 1974 in free association with New Zealand, which administers its foreign affairs and where Niueans hold citizenship.
Niue, once known as Savage Island, took the full brunt of Heta after the first major cyclone of the season sideswiped neighbouring Samoa, American Samoa and Tonga.
