Civil Defence is defending its decision to issue a tsunami warning this morning, even though it came to nothing and was cancelled less than two hours later.
Tongan officials sent an alert around 6:30am, after the islands were struck by an earthquake south-east of the capital Nuku’Alofa.
It measured 7.9 on the Richter scale.
Tonga sits on an explosive earth plate nicknamed the ‘Ring Of Fire’ and this week all elements were blasted.
An undersea volcano began erupting on Monday, a series of low magnitude earthquakes joined and then at around 6am, residents were shaken by the biggest earthquake of them all.
“It actually shook me out of bed this morning, so compared to all the previous earthquakes we’ve experienced last week – this one was pretty big,” said one witness.
Back here, Civil Defence quickly updated its emergency status, warning of a potentially damaging tsunami – even though the earthquakes epicentre was 2000km away.
Eventually, all that came from the quake was a four centimetre wave recorded at Niue and reports of a subtle rolling motion along the East Coast of New Zealand from Wellington to Gisborne.
Authorities say the warning had to be issued before the threat was fully assessed.
“We need to get the message out to our public pretty quickly because some of them can be quite short locations and short warning times,” says John Hamilton of Civil Defence.
Volocanologists say if the tsunami happened, New Zealand would have only had three to four hours warning.
“There is a wide range of communities that would have been affected and of course we are all very familiar with the sorts of waves and destructive capabilities that can be generated,” says Mr Hamilton.
In Tonga, it is not over yet – volcanic activity and aftershocks are expected to rumble for at least another few days.
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