The massive eruption of the submarine volcano Hunga-Tonga-Hunga-Ha’apai near the island nation of Tonga put many Pacific countries on alert over the weekend and triggered tidal waves. The tsunami waves were registered not only in Tonga, but also in New Zealand, Japan and Fiji. Flooding in Santa Cruz, California, has also been attributed to the outbreak. Even in Germany registered meteorologists the blast of the explosion.
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said on Sunday, so far there have been no official reports of injuries or deaths. Tonga was covered in volcanic dust as a result of the volcanic eruption, and communication with the island kingdom in the South Pacific was restricted because an undersea cable was damaged. There was a massive power outage on the island, cell phones only worked sporadically.
It is clear, however, that a tsunami “had a serious impact” on the capital of Tonga. Boats and boulders washed ashore and buildings were damaged. The New Zealand army will try to launch a surveillance flight on Monday. Flying is currently too unsafe because ash has been sighted at an altitude of almost 20 kilometers.
Covered with volcanic ash
The BBC quoted on Sunday evening Kingdom residents said Tonga looked “like a lunar landscape” after being covered by a layer of volcanic ash.
The USA and the United Nations promised help. According to the aid organization Save the Children, a person was missing in Tonga’s capital, Nuku’alofa, as reported by Radio New Zealand (RNZ).
According to the Australian Meteorological Service, the wave that hit Nuku’alofa, the capital of the archipelago, was about 120 centimeters high. the British BBC reported citing images from social media that water flowed through a church and several residential buildings in Nuku’alofa. In addition, residents in particularly low-lying areas tried to save themselves from the tsunami with their cars. According to media reports, Tonga’s King Tupou VI. brought to safety from the royal palace.
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres saidthat he was “deeply concerned”. The UN is monitoring the situation closely and is ready to help at any time. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken tweeted: “The United States stands ready to provide assistance to our Pacific neighbors.”
450 spitting craters
Tonga is located on the so-called Ring of Fire, which has formed around 40,000 kilometers in a circle around the Pacific Lake District and on which there are 450 spitting craters, about 75 percent of all volcanoes known worldwide. The tectonic plates that abut push the Pacific Lake Plate toward the interior of the Earth. There the rock heats up and turns into magma.
Named Hunga-Tonga-Hunga-Ha’apai, the volcano has been active since December. It is located about 30 kilometers southeast of Tonga’s Fonuafo’ou Island, also known as Falcon Island. The eruption on Saturday was apparently so violent that the tremors could also be felt 800 kilometers away in the Fiji Islands. A tidal wave arrived there, too, and ash fell.
A Japanese weather satellite captured these images of the volcanic eruption in the Pacific.
(Photo: dpa)
In Japan, the eruption of Hunga Tonga triggered the first tsunami warning since 2016. Because the underwater volcano is almost 8,000 kilometers further south, the weather agency in Tokyo initially had no worries. But that changed very early Sunday morning. The tsunami on Japan’s coast could be up to three meters high, it said. According to the Office for Fire and Disaster Management, 210,000 people have been asked to leave their homes and go to higher places.
Fukushima was immediately remembered in Japan
Many of those who were called to safety on Sunday morning had experienced the devastating tsunami on March 11, 2011. This brought waves of up to 40.5 meters high. 20,000 people died in Fukushima, Iwate and Miyagi prefectures. A giant wave triggered a meltdown in three reactors at the Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear power plant. Even for Japan, which was used to earthquakes, it was a trauma. That’s why nobody underestimated the danger when the weather bureau issued its tsunami warning. Late in the night, people moved to the signposted escape points.
The relief must have been all the greater when the waves stayed relatively low. The island of Amami-Oshima in the south of the Japanese island chain reported 1.20 meters, the city of Kuji in Iwate 1.10 meters. Waves stayed under a meter in most places. They capsized a few boats in Kochi and Tokushima prefectures. There were no reports of serious injuries until Sunday evening. Nevertheless, this night set a sign: In Japan, nature can strike at any time.
Earthquakes and tsunamis are common around the Pacific Lake District, and the entire tectonics are constantly in motion. The Fukushima disaster is just as much a result of tectonic activity as the 2004 tsunami in the Indian Ocean, which devastated many islands from Thailand to the Philippines.
Meteorologists even registered the pressure wave of the explosion in Germany.
(Photo: New Zealand High Commission/imago images)
“What happened there is what we call a phreatomagmatic explosion. When magma meets a lot of water, the resulting water vapor can have a thousand times the volume of water and trigger huge pressure waves,” said Tim Yilmaz, a volcanologist at the University of Munich.
It is known, said Yilmaz, that the Hunga Tonga also erupted in 1912, 1937, 1988 and most recently in 2014. Undersea eruptions often only produce mud, but this time there was an extreme ash ejection, similar to the Eyjafjallajökull volcano, which paralyzed air traffic in Europe in 2010. “Not only does the ash make kiwis more expensive in the supermarket because supply chains are disrupted, it can also lead to acid rain, which ruins agriculture and potentially causes lung damage,” Yilmaz said.
The last natural disaster on the Pacific Ring of Fire was just a month ago. The Semeru on Java in Indonesia erupted; more than 30 people died. It is still unclear how many people died when the Hunga-Tonga erupted. In 2014, during the last eruption, the underwater volcano created a new island.