Communications to the Tonga Islands remain limited after the eruption of the volcano in the Pacific – Le Monde

Communications to the Tonga Islands remained difficult on Monday, January 17, three days after the eruption of the Hunga-Tonga-Hunga-Ha’apai volcano, located in the middle of the South Pacific Ocean about 65 km from the capital Nuku’alofa.

The archipelago is thus deprived of the Internet due to a possibly severed underwater communications cable. “We only get fragmentary information, but it seems that the cable has been cut”, said Southern Cross Cable Network Director of Networks Dean Veverka.

“It could take up to two weeks to get it fixed. The nearest cable laying vessel is in Port Moresby”, he added, in reference to the capital of Papua New Guinea, located more than 4,000 kilometers from Tonga. Southern Cross assists Tonga Cable Limited, owner of the 872 kilometer cable linking Tonga to Fiji and from there to the rest of the world. Initially, the internet outage was attributed to a power outage caused by the powerful eruption, but tests conducted after power was restored revealed a broken cable.

The small Pacific kingdom, located about 1,800 kilometers northeast of New Zealand, had already been isolated for two weeks in 2019, when a ship’s anchor cut the cable. A small, locally operated satellite service had been set up to help maintain minimal contact with the outside world.

International aid

The tiny South Pacific nation is struggling to recover from an eruption that blanketed the capital Nuku’alofa in ash. Authorities in neighboring New Zealand said the disaster had caused “significant damage”, but no injuries and no deaths have been reported in the archipelago so far. On the other hand, the tsunami drowned, 10,000 km away, two women, on a beach in northern Peru, due to “abnormal waves”, the local National Emergency Operations Center announced on Sunday.

New Zealand was still carrying out surveillance flights over Tonga on Monday to assess the extent of the damage and information is coming in dribs and drabs.

Tonga has also accepted an Australian offer to send a surveillance plane, according to Canberra. Australia was also preparing “essential humanitarian supplies” to send. The United Nations children’s agency (UNICEF) was preparing emergency supplies, in coordination with Australia and New Zealand. The United States and the World Health Organization (WHO) have also said they are ready to send help.

An eruption heard as far away as Alaska

Stunning views from space show the timing of Friday’s eruption of Hunga-Tonga-Hunga-Ha’apai, on one of the archipelago’s uninhabited islands. It was heard as far away as Alaska, lasted eight minutes and sent plumes of gas, ash and smoke several miles high. The US Geological Institute (USGS) recorded it as equivalent to a magnitude 5.8 earthquake at zero depth.

Waves of 1.2 meters swept through Tonga’s capital, where residents fled to higher ground, leaving behind flooded homes as rocks and ash fell from the sky.

The eruption triggered tsunamis in the Pacific, with waves of 1.74 meters measured in Chanaral, Chile, and smaller observed along the Pacific coast from Alaska to Mexico. Waves of about 1.2 meters hit the Pacific coast of Japan. In California, the city of Santa Cruz was flooded by a tidal wave generated by the tsunami.

The Hunga-Tonga-Hunga-Ha’apai volcano had emerged in an eruption in 2009, and spewed out so many large boulders and ash in 2015 that a new island two kilometers long by one kilometer wide and 100 meters high was formed.

Corrigendum on January 17 at 3:40 a.m.: corrected headline and article claiming “another big eruption” is in progress. This information based on an alert from the Australian Volcanic Ash Observation Center (VAAC) in Darwin has not been confirmed by the warning centers.