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Military flights sent to assess damage from Pacific volcano:
New Zealand and Australia were able to send military surveillance flights to Tonga on Monday to assess the damage a huge undersea volcanic eruption left in the Pacific island nation.
A towering ash cloud since Saturday's eruption had prevented earlier flights. New Zealand hopes to send essential supplies, including much-needed drinking water, on a military transport plane later Monday.
Communications with Tonga remained extremely limited. The company that owns the single underwater communications cable that connects the island nation to the rest of the world said it likely was severed in the eruption and repairs could take weeks.
The loss of the cable leaves most Tongans unable to use the internet or make phone calls abroad. Those that have managed to get messages out described their country as looking like a moonscape as they began cleaning up from the tsunami waves and volcanic ash fall.
Tsunami waves of about 80 centimeters (2.7 feet) crashed into Tonga's shoreline, and New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern described damage to boats and coastal shops.
No casualties have been reported on Tonga, although there were still concerns about people on some of the smaller islands near the volcano. The tsunami waves crossed the Pacific, drowning two people in Peru and causing minor damage from New Zealand to Santa Cruz, California.
Scientists said they didn't think the eruption would have a significant impact on the Earth's climate.
Huge volcanic eruptions can sometimes cause temporary global cooling as sulfur dioxide is pumped into the stratosphere. But in the case of the Tonga eruption, initial satellite measurements indicated the amount of sulfur dioxide released would only have a tiny effect of perhaps 0.01 Celsius (0.02 Fahrenheit) global average cooling, said Alan Robock, a professor at Rutgers University.
Satellite images showed the spectacular undersea eruption Saturday evening, with a plume of ash, steam and gas rising like a giant mushroom above the South Pacific waters.
A sonic boom could be heard as far away as Alaska and sent pressure shockwaves around the planet twice, altering atmospheric pressure that may have briefly helped clear out the fog in Seattle, according to the National Weather Service. Large waves were detected as far as the Caribbean due to pressure changes generated by the eruption.
(Score: 4, Informative) by choose another one on Monday January 17 2022, @05:47PM (3 children)
Various UK media already reporting one British person confirmed dead, not just missing.
Given the known comms difficulties and the usual ratio of brits / local that actually get reported here, that probably translates to local casualties in the hundreds if not higher.
There are some reasons to be more optimistic though, the British casualty was reported to have been "walking on the beach" after posting on Instathingy about tsunami warnings and how eerily quiet it was... I make no further comment, words kind of fail me.
(Score: 2) by cmdrklarg on Monday January 17 2022, @07:05PM
oof da... that's a special kind of stupid there. Hopefully it was a successful Darwin award winner.
The world is full of kings and queens who blind your eyes and steal your dreams.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 17 2022, @09:19PM (1 child)
Sigh... this same kind of thing happened in 2011, although it was not so stupid; just ignorant. Believing the event was over, a man took a walk on the beach and was swept out and killed. We need to do a better job maybe, of educating people that it's not a singular event. It's a period where tsunami is a danger until the warning is called off, with multiple waves. He saw the first one and thought that was it.
When 2011 happened some people asked me if I was going to visit the coast and watch it. Hard no. As cool as it would be to see, it's just not worth it and I didn't need to be anywhere near an evacuation zone. On the flip side of this, there was some wild over-precaution. People jammed skyline drive in San Mateo County, CA which is over 1000 ft. above sea level, LOL. I think some of them were just hoping to get views through binoculars though.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Monday January 17 2022, @11:12PM
The instinct to just want to see what's going on overriding self-preservation seems to be a recurring problem. For instance, after the Boston Marathon bombing, the cops had tracked down the perpetrators and were engaging them in a fairly intense gun-fight, but they almost had to stop shooting because of idiots leaning out of their windows trying to get good video of the event on their cell phone.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.