ABC News: Tsunami Warning Lifted After Tonga Quake
NUKU'ALOFA, Tonga May 3, 2006 (AP)— A powerful earthquake struck early Thursday near the South Pacific nation of Tonga, prompting tsunami warnings for as far away as Fiji and New Zealand. But the warning never reached Tonga and was lifted after a tsunami of less than 2 feet.
There were no reports of injuries from the quake or tsunami, and a Tongan official said a few broken windows were the extent of the damage. The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Honolulu lifted its warning for all areas within two hours. It said there was no data indicating that the 4:26 a.m. earthquake generated a giant wave.
The magnitude 7.9 earthquake, classified by the U.S. Geological Survey as "major," struck about 95 miles south of Neiafu, Tonga, and 1,340 miles north-northeast of Auckland, New Zealand. It occurred 20 miles beneath the sea floor.
A warning said it was possible a tsunami could strike Fiji within two hours of the quake and then, an hour later, New Zealand.
But in Tonga, Mali'u Takai, deputy director of the Tonga's National Disaster Office, told The Associated Press a system that should have passed on a tsunami warning from the monitoring station in Hawaii malfunctioned.
"We didn't get a warning, we only got a cancellation. 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."
Takai's comments raised troubling questions about protections in place for inhabitants of the sparsely populated islands scattered thousands of miles across the earthquake-prone region.
The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center says its first alert went out 16 minutes after the earthquake but it was not received in Tonga because of a power failure there.
Gerard Fryer, the center's acting director, said "there was problem in Tonga where there was a power outage and they didn't get our initial message."
He said 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.
There were no reports of injuries from the quake or tsunami, and a Tongan official said a few broken windows were the extent of the damage. The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Honolulu lifted its warning for all areas within two hours. It said there was no data indicating that the 4:26 a.m. earthquake generated a giant wave.
The magnitude 7.9 earthquake, classified by the U.S. Geological Survey as "major," struck about 95 miles south of Neiafu, Tonga, and 1,340 miles north-northeast of Auckland, New Zealand. It occurred 20 miles beneath the sea floor.
A warning said it was possible a tsunami could strike Fiji within two hours of the quake and then, an hour later, New Zealand.
But in Tonga, Mali'u Takai, deputy director of the Tonga's National Disaster Office, told The Associated Press a system that should have passed on a tsunami warning from the monitoring station in Hawaii malfunctioned.
"We didn't get a warning, we only got a cancellation. 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."
Takai's comments raised troubling questions about protections in place for inhabitants of the sparsely populated islands scattered thousands of miles across the earthquake-prone region.
The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center says its first alert went out 16 minutes after the earthquake but it was not received in Tonga because of a power failure there.
Gerard Fryer, the center's acting director, said "there was problem in Tonga where there was a power outage and they didn't get our initial message."
He said 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.
posted by DP at 5:00 PM
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