Transporting International Aid, Two New Zealand Warships Targeted To Arrive In Tonga Friday

Aerial photo of Tonga after the volcanic eruption and tsunami from New Zealand's P3 surveillance plane. (Wikimedia Commons/NZ Defense Force)

JAKARTA - Two New Zealand navy ships carrying disaster relief will arrive in Tonga on Friday, the first international supplies to reach the Pacific island nation shaken by a volcanic eruption and tsunami.

Hundreds of homes on Tonga's small outer islands have been destroyed, and at least three people dead, following Saturday's devastating eruption which the government called an "unprecedented catastrophe".

With communications severely hampered by undersea cable breaks, information on the scale of the devastation so far has come mostly from reconnaissance aircraft.

New Zealand's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the Government of Tonga had approved the arrival of HMNZS Wellington and HMNZS Aotearoa in a COVID-19-free country, where concerns about a potential coronavirus outbreak are likely to complicate relief efforts.

"The ship is expected to arrive in Tonga on Friday, depending on weather conditions," the ministry said in a statement, citing Reuters January 19.

A reconnaissance flight using the second New Zealand Defense P3 Orion aircraft will fly over Tonga and Fiji on Wednesday, the ministry added, to assess the damage caused by the tsunami.

The eruption of the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai volcano sent a tsunami wave across the Pacific Ocean as it erupted with an audible explosion 2.300 km (1.430 miles) away in New Zealand.

Aerial photo of Tonga after the volcanic eruption and tsunami from New Zealand's P3 reconnaissance plane. (Wikimedia Commons/NZ Defense Force)

Waves up to 15 meters high hit the outer island group of Ha'apia, destroying all houses on Mangga Island, as well as the west coast of Tonga's main island, Tongatapu, the prime minister's office said.

New Zealand said power had now been restored, with cleanup and damage assessments ongoing. Relief supplies are being distributed by Tongan authorities.

Meanwhile, Tongan Prime Minister Siaosi Sovaleni has met with the head of the diplomatic mission based in the country to discuss their support, the statement said.

Separately, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison told a news conference in Canberra that he hoped to speak with PM Sovaleni on Wednesday.

"It's a very difficult environment to operate in, ash clouds and stuff like that. Our defense forces have maintained their operations and deployed as needed, as directed," PM Morrison said.

Tonga is still largely offline after the volcano released its only underwater fire optical communication cable. International mobile phone network provider Digicel has set up a temporary system in Tongatapu using the University of the South Pacific satellite dish, New Zealand's foreign ministry said.

That would allow a 2G connection to be made but the connection is uneven and covers only about 10 percent of the usual capacity. Meanwhile, US cable company SubCom predicts it will take at least four weeks to repair Tonga's cable connections.

Tongan communities overseas posted new images received from families at home on Facebook, providing a glimpse into the extent of the devastation.

The images show houses reduced to rubble, fallen trees, cracked roads and sidewalks, and ash from the volcanic eruption spreading across the island.

James Garvin, the chief scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, said the force of the eruption was estimated to be equivalent to five to 10 megatons of TNT, the explosive power of more than 500 times the nuclear bomb that the United States dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, at the end of World War Two.

Aid agencies, including the United Nations, are preparing to remotely carry out relief operations for Tonga to avert the COVID-19 outbreak, Fiji-based UN coordinator Jonathan Veitch said on Wednesday.

The agency will conduct most operations remotely, and may not send personnel to the island, he told a briefing.

"We believe we will be able to send flights with supplies. We are not sure that we can send flights with personnel and the reason is Tonga has a very strict COVID-free policy," Veitch said.

To note, Tonga is one of the few countries free of COVID-19, and an outbreak there would be catastrophic. The small island nation has 90 percent immunization coverage for both adults and young people over the age of 12, Veitch said.

"They are very careful about opening up their borders like many Pacific islands, and that's because of the history of disease outbreaks in the Pacific that have wiped out the people here," he said.

Separately, the process of cleaning up airport runway ashes is a government priority. The archipelago's main Fua'amotu International Airport was undamaged, but the ashes had to be removed manually.

"We thought it would be operational yesterday, but it hasn't been completely cleaned up because more ash is falling," said Veitch of the United Nations.

Australia and New Zealand have pledged immediate financial assistance to Tonga. The US Agency for International Development (USAID) approved $100.000 in direct aid to support people affected by volcanic eruptions and tsunami waves.