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Three Australian military aircraft arrived on the main island of Tonga in the Pacific Ocean on Saturday with food, drinking water and medicine. These are just some of the emergency vehicles that have been brought in recent days to meet the most basic needs in the remote archipelago, which has been severely affected by the aftermath of the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai submarine eruption.
Seven days after the eruption that caused a tsunami and a powerful shock wave there is still no accurate assessment of the damage.
In the days before it erupted, the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai underwater volcano appeared to be in a calm phase, after a few days that it had appeared turbulent in late 2021.
Between Saturday and Sunday, within hours, the eruption occurred which created a very powerful lava, which went thousands of kilometers producing a very devastating tsunami off the coast of the Tonga archipelago.
Due to the remote location of Tonga, a country of 105,000 located about 2,300 kilometers northeast of New Zealand, managing rescue operations was difficult.
For days very little news came from the archipelago because the only fiber-optic telecommunication cable connecting the Polynesian kingdom of Tonga to the rest of the world was damaged.
To further complicate international efforts, however, was the fact that most of the islands in the archipelago, of which 169 in total, were covered in volcanic ash, which made it impossible to land aircraft and also contaminated many reserves. drinking water.
The islands hardest hit by the eruption are those located in the western part of the country, several tens of kilometers away from the volcano.
Three people have lost their lives, rescue operations are ongoing, and the damage balance will be even harder to pull off.
On Wednesday, the telephone service in the archipelago was partially restored and on Thursday, after the runway of the country’s main airport was cleared, the first two military aircraft coming from Zealand and Australia brought drinking water and other products to meet basic needs. A New Zealand military ship with 250 thousand liters of drinking water arrived on Friday.
However, on Thursday, an Australian plane was forced to return to base due to a person who tested positive for coronavirus. While some technical problems delayed the arrival of two Japanese aircraft C-130 that among many food products, would bring another 5 thousand liters of drinking water.
Due to the coronavirus, relief operations are being carried out remotely and with the utmost care, as only one positive case has been detected in Tonga since the beginning of the pandemic.
UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said there was a major concern at the moment, as more than 50,000 people would not have access to safe water. In addition, he said, fuel is dwindling and in some areas serious damage has been reported to agriculture, livestock and fishing facilities.
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