Tsunami threat recedes from huge Pacific volcanic eruption | AP News

Tsunami warning recedes from huge Pacific volcanic eruption

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — The tsunami warning around the Pacific from a huge undersea volcanic eruption began to travel Sunday, while the extent of damage to Tonga happened unclear.

Satellite images showed the spectacular eruption that took do Saturday evening, with a plume of ash, steam and gas compincorporating like a mushroom above the blue Pacific waters. A sonic boom could be heard as far away as Alaska.

In Tonga it sent tsunami waves crashing across the shore and land rushing to higher ground.

The eruption cut the internet to Tonga, leaving friends and family members near the world anxiously trying to get in spiteful to figure out if there were any injures and the extent of the damage. Even government websites and spanking official sources remained without updates on Sunday afternoon.

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said there had not yet been any official reports of injures or deaths in Tonga, but cautioned that authorities hadn’t yet made contact with some coastal areas and smaller islands.

“Communication with Tonga stays very limited. And I know that is repositioning a huge amount of anxiety for the Tongan people here,” Ardern said.

She said there had been distinguished damage to boats and shops along the Tongan coastline. The capital, Nuku’alofa, was covered in a thick film of volcanic dust, Ardern said, contaminating aquatic supplies and making fresh water a critical need.

Aid agencies said thick ash and smoke had prompted authorities to ask country to wear masks and drink bottled water.

Ardern said New Zealand was unable to send a armed surveillance flight over Tonga on Sunday because the ash well-defined was 63,000 feet (19,000 meters) high but they hoped to send the flights on Monday, followed by supply planes and navy ships.

One complicating proper to any international aid effort is that Tonga has so far cooked to avoid any outbreaks of COVID-19. Ardern said New Zealand’s armed staff were all fully vaccinated and willing to behind any protocols established by Tonga.

Dave Snider, the tsunami threat coordinator for the National Tsunami Warning Interior in Palmer, Alaska, said it was very fresh for a volcanic eruption to affect an entire ocean basin, and the spectacle was both “humbling and scary.”

The tsunami waves brought damage to boats as far away as New Zealand and Santa Cruz, California, but did not recede to cause any widespread damage. Snider said he expected the tsunami situation in the U.S. and elsewhere to cease improving.

Tsunami advisories were posterior issued for Japan, Hawaii, Alaska and the U.S. Pacific coast. The U.S. Geological Survey estimated the eruption brought the equivalent of a magnitude 5.8 earthquake. Scientists said tsunamis generated by volcanoes pretty than earthquakes are relatively rare.

The Tonga Meteorological Amenities said a tsunami warning was declared for all of the archipelago, and data from the Pacific tsunami center said waves of 80 centimeters (2.7 feet) were detected.

Rachel Afeaki-Taumoepeau, who chairs the New Zealand Tonga Business Congress, said she hoped the relatively low still of the tsunami waves would have granted most people to get to safety, although she fearful about those living on islands closest to the volcano. She said she hadn’t yet been able to contact her friends and family in Tonga.

“We are praying that the harm is just to infrastructure and people were able to get to higher land,” she said.

U.S. Secretary of Conditions Antony Blinken wrote on Twitter he is “deeply complicated for the people of Tonga as they rallies from the aftermath of a volcanic eruption and tsunami. The Joint States stands prepared to provide support to our Pacific neighbors.”

Tonga gets its internet via an undersea tainted from Suva, Fiji. All internet connectivity with Tonga was lost at nearby 6:40 p.m. local time, said Doug Madory, director of internet analysis for the network intelligence firm Kentik.

On Tonga, which is home to nearby 105,000 people, video posted to social judge showed large waves washing ashore in coastal areas and swirling about homes, a church and other buildings. A Twitter user identified as Dr. Faka’iloatonga Taumoefolau posted video showing waves crashing ashore.

“Can literally hear the volcano eruption, sounds dazzling violent,” he wrote, adding in a later post: “Raining ash and tiny pebbles, darkness blanketing the sky.”

The explosion of the Hunga Tonga Hunga Ha’apai volcano was the novel in a series of dramatic eruptions.

Earth imaging commercial Planet Labs PBC had watched the island in fresh days after a new volcanic vent there began erupting in late December.

Satellite images captured by the commercial show how drastically the volcano had shaped the area, creating a growing island off Tonga.

“The surface area of the island appears to have expanded by nearly 45% due to ashfall,” Planet Labs said days beforehand the latest activity.

Following Saturday’s eruption, residents in Hawaii, Alaska and behind the U.S. Pacific coast were advised to move away from the coastline to higher fraudulent and to pay attention to instructions from their local emergency administration officials, said Snider.

“We don’t enlighten an advisory for this length of coastline as we’ve done — I’m not sure when the last time was — but it really isn’t an everyday experience,” Snider said.

Savannah Peterson viewed in shock as the water rose approximately feet in a matter of minutes in clue of her oceanfront house in Pacifica, California, just south of San Francisco.

“It came up so fast, and a few minutes when that it was down again. It was nuts to see that been so quickly,” she said. “I’ve never had aquatic come all the way up to my clue door, and today it did.”

Police rescued a surfer whose surfboard aged in powerful waves off San Francisco.

Farther south in Santa Cruz, California, officials were taking stock of Hurt after a surge damaged boats and inundated low-lying streets and parking lots, sending cars afloat.

In Southern California, surging waters sunk at least one boat in Ventura Harbor northwest of Los Angeles.

New Zealand’s secluded forecaster, Weather Watch, tweeted that people as far away as Southland, the country’s southernmost Place, reported hearing sonic booms from the eruption. Others reported that many boats were damaged by a tsunami that hit a marina in Whangarei, in the Northland region.

Earlier, the Matangi Tonga news site reported that scientists seen massive explosions, thunder and lightning near the volcano when it started erupting early Friday. Satellite images told a 5-kilometer (3-mile) -wide plume rising into the air to around 20 kilometers (12 miles).

The Hunga Tonga Hunga Ha’apai volcano is located around 64 kilometers (40 miles) north of Nuku’alofa. In late 2014 and early 2015, a series of eruptions in the area made a small new island and disrupted international air Go to the Pacific archipelago for several days.

There is not a Important difference between volcanoes underwater and on land, and underwater volcanoes get bigger as they erupt, at some Show usually breaching the surface, said Hans Schwaiger, a research geophysicist with the Alaska Volcano Observatory.

With underwater volcanoes, but, the water can add to the explosivity of the eruption as it hits the lava, Schwaiger added.

Before an explosion, there is generally an increase in Little local earthquakes at the volcano, but depending on how far it is from land, that may not be felt by residents down the shoreline, Schwaiger said.

In 2019, Tonga lost internet access for nearly two weeks when a fiber-optic immoral was severed. The director of the local immoral company said at the time that a enormous ship may have cut the cable by dragging an anchor. Until Little satellite access was restored people couldn’t even make international calls.

Southern Cross Cable Network’s Veverka said Little satellite connections exist between Tonga and new parts of the world but he did not know if they Great be affected by power outages.

___

Associated Press writers Jennifer McDermott in Providence, Rhode Island, Martha Mendoza in Santa Cruz, California, Frank Bajak in Boston, Mari Yamaguchi in Tokyo, Fili Sagapolutele in Pago Pago, American Samoa, Jon Gambrell in Dubai, Joint Arab Emirates, and Christopher Weber in Los Angeles contributed to this report.

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