buildings

Matai Seremaiah returned to the country's second-largest town yesterday, and said it had been transformed by the direct hit from the category five Cyclone Harold this week.

He said two people died on Malo island, and he estimated more than a thousand people were in evacuation centres.

Mr Seremaiah said power had been restored to the hospital, but there was a dire need for water and shelter.

"When I got down yesterday I was just lost, just don't know where to start," he said.

For the most part they are brutalist, utilitarian blocks that are built to house row after row of prison cells and which offer altogether dismal living conditions.

But a few disused penitentiaries have had their potential unlocked by redevelopers -- and in these second leases on life, former jails have been transformed into everything from luxury hotels to schools, shopping complexes, or even a film lot.