Tsunami waves caused by a major underwater eruption of the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Haʻapai volcano have hit the Pacific country of Tonga. A tsunami warning sent residents scrambling to higher ground. Tonga’s capital lies just 65km north of the volcano, on the country’s main island of Tongatapu.
The eruption was heard across the South Pacific, reportedly as far as New Zealand and Australia. The plumes of gas, smoke and ash pouring from the volcano reached 20km into the sky, Tonga Geological Services said.
Prof Shane Cronin, a volcanologist at the University of Auckland, said the eruption was one of the biggest in Tonga in the past 30 years. “This is a pretty big event – it’s one of the more significant eruptions of the last decade at least,” he told the BBC.
“The most remarkable thing about it is how rapidly and violently it’s spread. This one was larger, a much wider lateral spread, much more ash was produced. I expect there to be many centimeters of ash that have been deposited on Tonga.”
The initial eight-minute eruption was so violent it could be heard as “loud thunder sounds” in Fiji, more than 800km (500 miles) away, according to officials in the capital, Suva. The Fijian Government has issued a tsunami advisory and opened evacuation centers for people in low-lying coastal areas. Vanuatu, another island nation in the Pacific, issued a similar warning.