‘We had to simulate everyone to run’: How Tonga’s volcano and tsunami unfolded | Tonga

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Tonga is used to natural disasters, but it hasn’t seen anything like last week.

“We’ve been through tropical cyclones, but this is very new and no one will ever forget it,” says Marianne Kubo, a journalist at BroadCom Broadcasting FM87.5 in Tonga.

“We didn’t know what to do or what to expect.”

On Saturday January 15, at 5:10 pm local time, the Hongga Tonga-Hung Hapai volcano erupted under the sea in an explosion 600 times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. It can be felt as far away as New Zealand and Alaska. cause a tsunami.

So far, three people have been reported killed in Tonga by the tsunami, while two more people have drowned in Peru after abnormally large waves of the explosion reached the coast of South America.

There were signs that something was wrong. The fetid smell of sulfur was in the air throughout Tonga all summer, indicating that the undersea volcano, located about 65 kilometers northwest of the country’s capital, Nuku’alofa, was active. There were small volcanic eruptions, and on a Friday, the day before the eruption and tsunami, the water in Nuku’alofa Harbor swirled and whirled, something no one had seen before.

When the explosion happened, the sound was so loud that Kubo’s ears were ringing.

“Do you know that experience when you fly in a plane with your ears? It was like that ten times. We couldn’t hear each other, we could just simulate everyone just to run, just to go, let’s go and leave the house right away,” she said.

She and her family got into the car. The main road, usually two lanes of traffic – one in each direction – became four lanes of traffic, all heading east, away from the volcano.

An overview of Nomuka in the Tonga group of islands before and after the volcanic eruption. Photo: AP

“We thought it was raining, because we could hear it dangling on the windshield…but there was no rain, it was those little rocks. And then the dust started falling…black dust was just falling.”

The sky gets dark by 6pm, while nighttime doesn’t usually happen at this time of year until 8pm. Traffic stopped as people’s cars became covered in thick layers of ash. The boys ran along the road with water bottles, splashing water on the windshield so the cars would keep moving.

Kupu arrived at her brother’s house, indoors and on higher ground, and was able to return home the next day.

Tonga: New footage shows the effects of a volcano eruption and tsunami – video

Since then, she has been working around the clock to tell the stories of devastation and survival from Tonga.

I traveled west, to the hardest-hit part of the main island, on Tuesday to see the damage there.

The first thing that hit her was the smell.

“I don’t know what it is, I think [it was from] The sea floor is washed from the outside [to land] with clay. Even dead fish were found there on Earth.

The power of the tsunami was clearly visible. The coconut trees that stood upright in rows curved to the right, almost parallel to the ground, became in the direction pushed down by the tsunami waves.

Marianne Kubo, Tonga journalist wears a scarf to protect herself from falling ash from the Tonga volcano Image: Supplied

Everything on the west side of the road – the direction the tsunami struck – was lifted, uprooted, carried across the road and smashed into trees on the east side.

“The woods, the bushes, the cars, the roofs, they were all trapped in the coconut trees on the road; houses, they were all on the other side of the road.

“Everything just died. There’s just mud and dust everywhere. The houses just disappeared… Some houses are still standing, but everything inside the house was destroyed by sea water. The beds, chairs, sofas are all gone. I mean, wet or destroyed, so They are unlivable.”

The eyes of the world were on Tonga last week. During the eruption of the volcano, the country’s undersea communication cable was damaged in two places, almost cutting off the island from the rest of the world, which was anxiously awaiting the news.

When satellite connectivity to her radio station was restored, it was suddenly overflowed with requests for interviews with television stations in the United States, Germany, China and the Netherlands.

Volcanic ash covers the street next to the old prime minister’s office in Nuku’alofa, Tonga’s capital. Photo: Marie-Lynn Funua/Matanji Tonga/AFP/Getty Images

‘People were screaming and saying ‘You are the first person we spoke to from Tonga! Are you okay?’ And I said, “Yeah, I’m back at work on Monday.”

“I didn’t know the whole world thought the Tonga sank,” she said.

But while she’s baffled and enjoying the global attention the disaster deserves — Kubo says she tests journalists on whether they’ve heard of Tonga before the volcano hit and that her default interpretation to people is that Tonga is near Samoa, “where the rock is from” — she feels Worried that attention will move quickly and Tonga will be left alone with this crisis.

Drinking the water is a major concern, says Kubo, given the ash that covered the island, as well as the food, given that many people depend on the farms destroyed by the disaster.

“I might keep quiet, but we need help,” she said. “We’ve lost lives, we’ve lost homes…we destroyed homes, damaged roads. We need help and we don’t know how long we’ll live with this and how we’re going to do it.” [get through it], not only physical things but also mentally…because we had never experienced this before.”

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