New Zealand ships take relief supplies to tsunami-hit Tonga as island tries to remain Covid-free
- The Pacific island nation, reeling from a volcanic eruption and tsunami, is trying to avoid a Covid-19 outbreak as aid agencies draw up plans to send supplies
- China, Japan and Australia have all pledged to send aid or financial help; including vital water supplies which have been contaminated by ash from the volcano
Hundreds of homes in Tonga’s smaller outer islands have been destroyed, and at least three people were killed after Saturday’s huge eruption triggered tsunami waves, which rolled over the islands causing what the government has called “an unprecedented disaster”.
With communications badly hampered by the severing of an undersea cable, information on the scale of the devastation has mostly come from reconnaissance aircraft.
“For the people of Tonga, we’re heading their way now with a whole lot of water,” Simon Griffiths, captain of the HMNZS Aotearoa, said in a release.
Diplomat says entire Tonga village destroyed after volcanic eruption
Griffiths said his ship was carrying 250,000 litres of water, and had the capacity to produce another 70,000 litres a day, along with other supplies.
New Zealand’s foreign ministry said the Tongan government has approved the arrival of Aotearoa and the HMNZS Wellington in the Covid-free nation, where concerns about a potential coronavirus outbreak are likely to complicate relief efforts.
Tonga has said its water supplies have been contaminated by ash from the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano, which erupted with a blast heard 2,300km away in New Zealand. It also sent tsunami waves across the Pacific Ocean.
James Garvin, chief scientist at Nasa’s Goddard Space Flight Centre, said the force of the eruption was estimated to be equivalent to five to 10 megatons of TNT, an explosive force more than 500 times the nuclear bomb dropped by the US on Hiroshima, Japan, at the end of second world war.
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Tonga still cut off from outside world after massive undersea volcano eruption
The Red Cross said its teams in Tonga were distributing drinking water across the islands where salt water from the tsunami and volcanic ash were “polluting the clean drinking water sources of tens of thousands of people”.
Other countries and agencies including the United Nations are drawing up plans to send aid.
Japan said Wednesday it will provide more than US$1 million and relief supplies to disaster-hit Tonga after an undersea volcanic eruption and tsunami waves caused by it left at least three people dead and caused major damage on the Pacific island.
Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihiko Isozaki said the government is considering sending drinking water and equipment for removing volcanic ash, among other supplies, using the country’s Self-Defence Forces.
“Many Tongan people are suffering from the disaster, which has caused heavy damage, so we will offer as much support as possible,” Isozaki told reporters, adding that Japan will closely cooperate with Australia and New Zealand on restoration and reconstruction work in Tonga.
China pledges aid to Tonga in wake of devastating volcano
In a related move, senior vice Defence Minister Makoto Oniki said the defence Ministry will dispatch liaison officers to Australia as soon as Thursday to gather information there and coordinate with other supporting countries.
The moves came a day after Tokyo said it received a request for support from the government of Tonga following Saturday’s volcanic eruption off the South Pacific island nation that sent tsunami waves across the Pacific.
A Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson said it would send help, including water, when the archipelago’s main Fua’amotu International Airport is open gain. It was not damaged but was covered in ash, which is being cleared manually.
“We thought that it would be operational yesterday, but it has not been fully cleared yet because more ash has been falling,” Fiji-based UN coordinator Jonathan Veitch said on Wednesday.
A second New Zealand Defence P3 Orion surveillance flight will fly over Tonga and Fiji on Wednesday to assess damage, the foreign ministry said.
Waves reaching up to 15m hit the outer Ha’apia island group, destroying all of the houses on the island of Mango, as well as the west coast of Tonga’s main island, Tongatapu, the prime minister’s office said.
On the west coast of Tongatapu, residents were being moved to evacuation centres as 56 houses were destroyed or seriously damaged on that coast.
New Zealand said power has now been restored, and clean-up and damage assessments were going on and Tongan authorities were distributing relief supplies.
Australia and New Zealand have promised financial help. The US Agency for International Development approved US$100,000 in immediate help to support people affected by volcanic eruptions and tsunami waves.
Tongan Prime Minister Siaosi Sovaleni has met the heads of diplomatic missions to discuss aid, the office said.
Tonga is still largely offline after the volcano severed the sole undersea fibre-optics communication cable.
International mobile phone network provider Digicel has set up an interim system on Tongatapu using the University of South Pacific’s satellite dish, the New Zealand foreign ministry said.
That would allow a 2G connection to be established but the reception is patchy and amounts to about 10 per cent of usual capacity.
US cable company SubCom has advised it will take at least four weeks for Tonga’s cable connection to be repaired, it added.
Tongan communities abroad posted new images received from families back home on Facebook, giving a glimpse into the extent of the devastation.
The images show homes reduced to rubble, fallen trees, cracked roads and pavements and grey ash everywhere.
Why Tonga’s volcanic eruption was so violent, and what to expect next
Aid agencies, including the UN, are preparing to get relief supplies to Tonga at a distance to avoid introducing the coronavirus, Veitch said.
Tonga is one of the few countries that is virus-free and an outbreak there would disastrous, he said.
“We believe that we will be able to send flights with supplies. We’re not sure that we can send flights with personnel and the reason for this is that Tonga has a very strict Covid-free policy,” Veitch told a briefing.
“They’ve been very cautious about opening their borders like many Pacific islands, and that is because of the history of disease outbreaks in the Pacific which has wiped out societies here.”
Aid efforts for Tonga are being hampered by the thick layer of ash that fell on the nation including on its main airport’s runway, which is preventing aircraft carrying humanitarian help from landing, according to the New Zealand Foreign Ministry.
Additional reporting by Kyodo.
