‘Most powerful eruption in 30 years’ sends waves around Pacific
Boats bashed into a quiet harbour in Southern California, a remote island was battered in Japan by 1.2m waves and two women were swept to their deaths on a beach in Peru — about 10,000km from an undersea volcanic eruption so powerful that the tsunami it set off churned ocean waters halfway across the globe.
Two people drowned off a beach in northern Peru when 2m waves hit a truck, dragging it into the sea at Naylamp Beach, Lambayeque, in the north of the country.
The driver escaped but his wife and another woman drowned in the swell, the Daily Mail reported. Peruvian police said the two victims were found dead by officers from a Naylamp Beach police station after “abnormal” waves hit the coastline.
So far, there have been no confirmed injuries or casualties in Tonga itself, although there are reports of at least two people missing.
The explosion prompted tsunami warnings and evacuation orders around the world and caused huge surges on several South Pacific islands, around coastal New Zealand and in Japan.
Peru’s National Institute of Civil Defence said more than 20 ports were temporarily closed as a precautionary measure.
Peru, unlike neighbouring Chile and Ecuador, declined to close beaches or issue tsunami warnings after the eruption, apparently believing it was in no danger. But seawater flooded several coastal areas of Peru on Sunday, surprising tourists and beachgoers, images on TV and social media showed.
Early data from the eruption suggests it is the biggest blast since Mt Pinatubo in the Philippines 30 years ago, University of Auckland volcanologist Professor Shane Cronin said yesterday.
The eruption of the Hunga TongaHunga Ha’apai underwater volcano on Saturday shot thick ash and steam 20km skywards.
Cronin said scenes on the ground would have appeared apocalyptic after the eruption: ash clouds blotting out the sun, thunderclaps of booming shockwaves and thousands of lightning strikes.
“The clouds that people could see in the distance, the booming noises and then the waves coming from the first tsunami . . . The next step is when the ash clouds spread across Tongatapu, and that ash cloud is so dense with fine ash particles that it blocks the sun completely, so it gets really dark.”
Cronin said rain, small pebbles and many centimetres of ash would have rained down. The ash clouds ballooned over the island after the eruption, forming an umbrella with a diameter of 260km.
“The large and explosive lateral spread of the eruption suggests that it was probably the biggest one since about the 1991 eruption of Pinatubo,” Cronin said.
He said early data suggested the eruption could measure as high as five on the volcanic explosivity index (VEI). The index estimates the strength and potential impact of an eruption on an eight-point scale, with each successive interval representing a tenfold increase in energy. Cronin said a VEI-5 eruption would happen once or twice in a decade.
The Mt Pinatubo eruption, which had a VEI of six, pumped 15 million tonnes of sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere and cooled the earth by one degree for the next year and a half.