http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/rwb.nsf/db900sid/HHVU-7WKCWT?OpenDocument&rc=5&emid=TS-2009-000209-ASM

 

Tongan island is "over 90 percent" destroyed 

Source: Solomon Islands People First Network (PFnet) 

Date: 02 Oct 2009 

Relief workers have reached the remote Nuiatoputapu Island in the north of Tonga and are 
reporting that most of the buildings have been washed away.  

Nine people died in Tonga after three big waves moved about 600 metres inland.  

Alfred Soakai from Tonga's National Disaster office says about 1300 to 1600 people live 
on Nuiatoputapu Island and locals are now experiencing some relief.  

"There's a lot of scared people there at the moment but they are slowly being counselled 
by the staff that went up on the patrol boat."  

Alfred Soakai says people have enough food, shelter and medicine but they must now look 
on to the second stage of providing assistance.  

He says the hospital is completely destroyed, and the island has lost a lot of infrastructure.  

"If you could pass your mind back to the tsunami in 2004, there're similar images of 
flattening villages. In one village of Hihifa we have over 90 percent of the buildings 
damaged, trees upturned, and we could still see seawater over the low lying areas of the 
island."  

The tourism office on Tonga's Ha'apai island group says two waves struck the group's 
main island Lifuka, which displaced several families.  

The office's head, Nonu Pohiva, says the waves damaged a few houses on Lifuka's low 
lying areas.  

"There're a few families affected on Ha'apai. There were about two waves coming on 
shore and there were a few families who were staying very close to the beach whose 
houses were damaged, but luckily there were no casualties."  

Nonu Pohiva says the families are mainly being looked after by relatives.  

The 8-point zero quake occurred at the north end of a large active tectonic plate boundary, 
close to the 10 kilometre-deep Tonga-Kermadec Trench.