Island got no tsunami alert
Published 9:00 pm Wednesday, May 3, 2006
NUKU’ALOFA, Tonga – A powerful earthquake struck near the South Pacific nation of Tonga early today, triggering tsunami warnings for as far away as Fiji and New Zealand. But word of the imminent danger never reached the tiny country closest to the epicenter.
There were no reports of injuries from the magnitude-7.9 temblor, about 95 miles south of Neiafu, Tonga, and 1,340 miles north-northeast of Auckland, New Zealand. Authorities lifted the warnings within two hours, after recording a wave of less than 2 feet.
But nearly 18 months after an earthquake-driven tsunami in the Indian Ocean left at least 216,000 people dead or missing, sparking international calls for a better warning system, Pacific islanders received little or no notice of today’s threat.
A warning issued by the Honolulu-based Pacific Tsunami Warning Center first went out 16 minutes after the 4:26 a.m. earthquake, which occurred 34 miles below sea level.
“We usually send it through e-mails, faxes, we make phone calls to the places nearest to the epicenter to make sure people are warned,” said Victor Sardina, a geophysicist at the center.
Tonga did not receive the alert because of a power failure there, said the center’s acting director, Gerard Fryer.
“There was problem in Tonga where there was a power outage and they didn’t get our initial message,” Fryer said, adding that the center needs to work with Tonga to correct the problem. He said he did not know whether the power failure was caused by the earthquake.
Mali’u Takai, deputy director of the Tonga’s National Disaster Office, said no warning was received.
“Nobody got a warning through the emergency satellite system in our meteorological office,” Takai said. “Judging by the location of the epicenter, we would have been caught out without any warning at all because of the system’s malfunction.”
However, any warning probably would have been too late for Tongans if a major tsunami had come, because the epicenter was so close.
Tonga – a 170-island archipelago about halfway between Australia and Tahiti – has a population of about 108,000 and an economy dependent on pumpkin and vanilla exports, fishing, foreign aid and remittances from Tongans abroad.
Now the last monarchy in the Pacific, Tonga has been a Polynesian kingdom and a protectorate of Britain, from which it acquired independence in 1970. It is ruled by 87-year-old King Taufa’ahau Tupou IV.
Associated Press
Gerard Fryer, acting director of the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Ewa Beach, Hawaii, talks about the warning after an earthquake in the southern Pacific Ocean.
