Two New Zealand navy vessels will arrive in Tonga on Friday carrying critical water supplies. The Pacific Island nation remains largely cut off from the outside world.
Hundreds of homes in Tonga's smaller outer islands are reported to be destroyed. At least three deaths were reported after Saturday's huge eruption triggered tsunami waves that rolled over the islands, causing what the government calls an unprecedented disaster.
The islands airport remained engulfed by volcanic ash. Information on the scale of devastation has come mostly from reconnaissance aircraft. It is expected the undersea cable will take four weeks to be repaired, leaving the countries telecommunications system operating at 10% of its usual capacity.
Tonga Red Cross is leading the local response and has prepared supplies stockpiled to support 1,200 households. These will need to be replenished in the coming days and weeks to sustain the effort. Aid groups were aware of Covid-19 restrictions that require people coming into the country to isolate for up to three weeks, and goods to be quarantined for days.
A senior Tongan diplomat in Canberra, Curtis Tuihalangingie, told ABC that there were concerns of “a tsunami of Covid hitting Tonga” as humanitarian relief came to the country.
Tonga has only one recorded case of Covid-19 throughout the pandemic and has maintained a strict quarantine control regime out of caution.
The Red Cross said its teams in Tonga had confirmed that salt water from the tsunami and volcanic ash were polluting the drinking water sources of tens of thousands of people.
"Securing access to safe drinking water is a critical immediate priority ... as there is a mounting risk of diseases, such as cholera and diarrhoea," Katie Greenwood, a Pacific official of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, said in a statement.
The Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai volcano erupted with a blast heard 2,300 km (1,430 miles) away in New Zealand and sent tsunami waves across the Pacific Ocean.
James Garvin, chief scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, said the force of the eruption was estimated to be the equivalent of five to 10 megatons of TNT, or more than 500 times that of the nuclear bomb the United States dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima at the end of World War Two.
Tongan communities abroad have posted images from families on Facebook, giving a glimpse of the devastation, with homes reduced to rubble, fallen trees, cracked roads and sidewalks and everything coated in grey ash.
Though there were initial fears the eruption and resulting tsunami may have damaged Tonga’s main airport, these proved unfounded with teams of volunteers working to clear the runway.
An update from the New Zealand government on said this work was expected to finish on Wednesday, with power having been restored, clean-up efforts under way and damage assessments taking place.
-Reuters, AP