‘There’s nothing there for them’: Extent of Tonga’s devastation emerges

Tuesday, 18 January 2022

Satellite images of Tonga have shown some of the damage caused by the eruption and tsunami.

“There’s nothing there for them” – that is the fear of New Zealand’s Tongan community as their relatives at home struggle to get necessities such as water and shelter in the wake of Saturday’s devastating volcanic eruption and tsunami.

Three people are confirmed dead after the explosive eruption of Hunga-Tonga-Hunga-Ha'apai.

Photographs taken during an Air Force surveillance flight on Monday show a thick layer of ash blanketing the capital Nuku’alofa.

Surveillance images reveal catastrophic damage, with buildings in villages washed away or badly damaged, roofs covered with ash and trees uprooted.

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Dr Tule Fanakava Misa with her husband in her home village of Tongatapu. Today she’s not sure how much of the village is left.

In some higher places, tarpaulins have been spotted as people battle to find shelter.

Communication with the islands has been severely limited after undersea cables were damaged, leaving families overseas anxious for news.

Among them was Dr Tule Fanakava Misa, who herself experienced disaster as a child in 1982 when Cyclone Isaac tore through her Tongan village, destroying 81 houses in its wake.

Now she fears the place she calls home has been flattened under the 1.2 metre tsunami waves that swamped coastal communities following the massive offshore volcanic eruption.

On the western tip of Tongatapu, Tonga’s main island, the small village of Kanokupolu is surrounded by sea and lies just metres from the shore.

Misa on Saturday last spoke to aunts and uncles who still live there, but was cut off as communications went down.

More images have been released from a Royal New Zealand Air Force P-3K2 Orion reconnaissance flight on Monday 17 January over Tonga.

She received two emails on Monday from a cousin who works for the Australian High Commission in Tonga that confirmed everyone had been evacuated before the waves swamped the village.

But residents were unable to go back because it was not safe or habitable, she said.

Despite a lack of communication, the disaster severing a fibre-optic subsea cable connecting Tonga to Fiji, a clearer picture of the devastation facing some coastal areas is beginning to emerge.

Siale Faitotonu is waiting to hear how the New Zealand Tongan community can help.

Misa, a Christchurch-based Pasifika public health dentist, struggled to contain her emotions as she spoke to Stuff, saying this could be the worst disaster the village had experienced.

“In 1982 there was a hurricane,” she said. “I was very little, and I thought it was bad with seawater coming in but not like the waves I’ve seen in some pictures.”

Misa also spoke to her sister, who lives on higher land inland on Tongatapu, not long before the tsunami.

She told Misa there was an “awful smell” in the air and said the landscape suddenly turned dark before the phone line disconnected.

But it is the people of Kanokupolu she worries about, and how they will get the basics they need to survive, such as water and shelter.

Ashfall has coated Nomuka, Tonga, a small island northeast of the Hung-Tonga-Hunga-Ha'apai volcano which erupted on Saturday.

“There’s nothing there for them.”

Siale Faitotonu called his brother Lousa on Saturday afternoon as he was coming back from the family plantation in the centre of Tongatapu after harvesting produce for the family’s Sunday meal.

Lousa told him he could smell sulphur and said it was hard to breathe, but shrugged if off because Tongans were used to such smells.

“We know that smell, especially when we were in high school,” Faitotonu said.

The tsunami swamped coastal Tonga, sending 1.2 metre waves crashing through seaside communities.

He was unable to get hold of another brother who lives in the same area and has had no contact since the phone call went dead.

The Christchurch Tongan community leader believed the island would have enough food supplies, but said drinking water would be critical.

Like many, he was waiting for the New Zealand Government to give more detail on the situation on the ground.

The only person identified as a casualty so far is British woman Angela Glover, 50, the founder of an animal rescue shelter, who was washed away trying to save her dogs.

Her brother told media that authorities had recovered her body, but it was not known if her death was being counted as one of the confirmed.

Air Force images revealed the extent of the ash and debris covering a runway at the capital, preventing the landing of a C-130 Hercules aircraft sent from New Zealand to drop emergency supplies.

Two Royal New Zealand Navy ships – HMNZS Wellington and HMNZS Aotearoa – departed on a three-day voyage to Tonga on Tuesday, carrying hydrographic survey and diving teams, bulk water supplies and humanitarian and disaster relief stores.

A desalination plant on one of the ships can carry 250,000 litres, and produce 70,000 litres per day.

The New Zealand Government has also allocated a further $500,000 in humanitarian assistance, taking initial funding to $1 million.

But Amankai Misa said the lack of communication meant the situation on the ground remained unclear.

The Etu Pasifika general manager spoke to his aunts and uncles in Nuku’alofa on Friday and Saturday as they prepared to go to higher ground.

He sensed they had no idea of what was coming, because they were used to volcanic activity and the smell of sulphur in the air.

Only able to source information via the New Zealand High Commission’s social media feed, Misa is now concentrating on helping to co-ordinate a response.

“We will mobilise as a community over the coming weeks.”