Tsunami-hit Tonga remained largely uncontactable on Sunday with telephone and internet links severed, leaving relatives in faraway New Zealand praying for their families on the Pacific islands as casualty reports had yet to come through.
Official damage assessments were not yet available, she said, but the New Zealand high commission in Nuku'alofa had told her the tsunami has had a significant affect on the foreshore on the northern side of Nuku'alofa, with boats and large boulders washed ashore.Australia said it will send a P8 surveillance aircraft to Tonga on Monday to assess damage to critical infrastructure such as roads, ports and power lines, which will determine the next phase of the response effort.
“My entire house was shaking,” said Sanya Ruggiero, a consulting communications adviser based in Suva, the capital of Fiji, some 750km from Tonga. Doctor Ernst Von Schwarz uses his mobile phone to record waves from the Seal Beach municipal pier after a tsunami advisory was issued, following an underwater volcano eruption over 8500km away, in Seal Beach, California, US, on January 15 2022.Rumblings and eruptions from the volcano continued to be heard through the night, Ruggiero said. Hundreds of people were moved to evacuation centres in Suva. Fiji Airways had to cancel all its flights due to the ash clouds.
The eight-minute eruption on Saturday triggered tsunami warnings and evacuations in several countries. The eruption caused flooding across portions of coastal Alaska and California in the US.
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