A Newly Active Volcano, an Earthquake, and a Tsunami Warning …Don’t Worry, We’re All Fine!

Last week was a pretty eventful one, as many of you saw via internet news sources. First, thank you to everyone who sent a concerned/worried/impressed email- I am completely fine, and I really appreciate that you were all thinking of me!

So this whole chain of events (at least from my perspective) started with a previously underwater volcano that decided, hmmm, life down here is getting pretty boring, I should probably stir things up. It is located between the island groups of Tongatapu and Ha’apai, although closer to Tongatapu, erupted at the beginning of last week, and from what I have heard, it was a pretty incredible sight. My first indication that something had happened was when no planes came into the airport all day on Tuesday. Since I live right next to the airport (literally, check google maps) I’ve become buddies with most of the airport employees. Usually our friendship extends primarily to yelling morning greetings over the roar of the airplane engines, but in the absence of any planes or work going on, I headed over to chat with some of the workers to see why things had come to a standstill. Most of the airport grounds workers speak only Tongan, but I was able to conclude that there was a reason the planes weren’t running, ie the problem wasn’t that they were all maumau (broken) as has happened frequently in the past. When no planes came in the following day either, I sought out another source of information, who told me that there had been a volcano in the ocean, and the radio news broadcast that morning confirmed this info…although I was still pretty shaky on where the volcano was and what, if any damage it had caused. Most people I talked to were either unaware of the volcano or wholly unconcerned, so I deduced there hadn’t been any casualties or damage, and decided to carry on as usual until the internet started working and I could check the news over the weekend.

However, on Thursday morning, I was woken up by a pretty rough and violent shaking. Looking up through my mosquito net, I could see the discs and mirror on my wall falling off, and my immediate thought was something like, “Ugh, I don’t have to be up for another hour.” followed by, “I hope my mirror doesn’t break- it’s from Nuku’alofa and I have no idea where I’ll find another one.” There are earthquakes from time to time in Tonga, it being a string of tiny islands in the middle of a very large ocean perched on several tectonic plates along the Tongan Trench, but this one was a bit larger than most and lasted for a good two minutes or so. Still, nothing much to worry about.

It wasn’t until later that morning when, listening to the radio over a cup of tea before school, I began to grow concerned. For the serious topics or things that are transmitted from other countries, the radio will be in English, at least for a little bit, and it was then I heard that a tsunami warning had been issued, I think from Hawaii. Crap- Ha’apai, in particular, is a very low-lying island group (the last storm we had washed out a huge chunk of the main road and several houses) and if a tsunami were to hit, we’d all be screwed. Actually screwed…well, probably more like dead, but you get the point. Apparently, the earthquake (or maybe the volcano) has set some events in motion, and things were not looking good. Thankfully, the warning was cancelled about 15 minutes after it was issued, a fact PC obviously missed, as they called later that morning to issue a ‘code white’ alert, which they then rescinded a few hours later.

In the end, we all came out completely fine, although slightly baffled as to how people half way around the world knew what was happening here before we did- one PCV here found out about the volcano from friends in California. I’m just hoping that the volcano is still acting up a bit, or at least smoking, when I fly over it on Monday on my way back to Nuku’alofa for In Service Training (IST) with PC…I’d hate to be so close to such an awesome phenomenon and not even get to see it!