Tonga is facing imminent water and food shortages after crops and drinking sources were inundated with salt water and ash from a devastating volcanic explosion which triggered a 50ft tsunami, aid agencies have warned.
Water which tens of thousands of people rely on to drink has been polluted, the Red Cross said today, as Tonga's parliamentary speaker added that 'all agriculture' on the islands has also been destroyed.
Tongan communities abroad have posted images from families on Facebook, giving a glimpse of the devastation, with homes reduced to rubble, fallen trees, cracked roads and sidewalks and everything coated in grey ash.
New Zealand and Australian aid flights are due to start landing at Tonga's main airport starting Thursday as work to clear the runway of ash nears completion, with naval vessels due to bring water supplies by Friday.
But complicating efforts are Tonga's insistence that any aid deliveries have to be 'contactless' due to the risk of Covid being brought to the region, which has so-far avoided getting caught up in the pandemic.
'They really don't want to exchange one disaster for another,' said Katie Greenwood, head of delegation in the Pacific for the Red Cross.
Elsewhere, it was revealed that a tsunami warning system failed in the wake of Saturday's eruption, after an undersea internet cable was severed and cut all communication between the islands and with the outside world.
Pictures have emerged on social media showing the scale of the devastation in Tonga following the tsunami. The island nation is facing imminent water and food shortages after crops and drinking sources were inundated with salt water and ash from a devastating volcanic explosion which triggered a 50ft tsunami, aid agencies have warned
A man surveys the scene of devastation with debris strewn across the road in Tonga in the wake of the tsunami. Water which tens of thousands of people rely on to drink has been polluted, the Red Cross said today, as Tonga's parliamentary speaker added that 'all agriculture' on the islands has also been destroyed
Wasteland: The coastline of the tropical paradise has been flattened in some areas with palm trees and buildings swept away
As well as being pounded by a tsunami, the island was coated with a thick layer of volcanic dust
Trees were torn down, cars crushed and houses swept away by the force of the tsunami. Pictures are slowly emerging on social media showing the scale of destruction
Wasteland: The normally lush and verdant waterfront was flattened by the tsunami which struck after a massive volcanic eruption
Pictured: Trees uprooted by the force of the tsunami that hit Tonga The undersea telecommunications cable connecting Tonga to the rest of the world that was damaged by a volcano eruption will take at least a month to fix, its owner said on Wednesday, with the delay likely hampering disaster recovery efforts
Two New Zealand navy vessels will arrive in Tonga on Friday carrying critical water supplies for the Pacific island nation reeling from a volcanic eruption and tsunami and largely cut off from the outside world
Alistair Coldrick, a Briton who runs a tourist company on the Vava'u islands which sit around 160miles from the Hunga-Tonga volcano, told Sky News that no warning was sent despite the eruption triggering a 50ft tsunami which devastated some islands - destroying all buildings on one and leaving just two standing on another.
Despite the communication blackout, he said most people who heard the eruption - which he compared to 'a bomb' going off - did start heading for high ground because they knew 'something catastrophic had happened.'
He said people in Vava'u have been living in 'fearful limbo' since the eruption because there has been no contact with the other islands, meaning no updates on the extent of the damage or number of people killed.
SubCom, the American company which manages the undersea cable from Fiji to Tonga, has warned that it will take 'at least' four weeks for the line to be repaired.
During that time updates from the islands to the outside world are likely to be sparse, with the Tongan government sending its first dispatch just yesterday - describing the disaster as 'unprecedented' and saying damage to some of its smaller, outlying islands is severe.
The brief statement said that at least three people have been killed and 'a number' injured, though stressed that information-gathering is still at a preliminary stage and more-detailed assessments are underway.
It revealed the worst-hit islands are Mango, where every building has been flattened, and Fonoifua, where just two structures remain standing. Evacuations of both islands are underway.
Nomuka island has also sustained heavy damage and is being evacuated, the update said, while adding that western areas of the two main islands of Tongatapu and 'Eua have been hard-hit.
Hundreds of homes in Tonga's smaller outer islands have been destroyed, with at least three dead, after Saturday's huge eruption triggered tsunami waves that rolled over the islands, home to 105,000 people
The Red Cross said its teams in Tonga had confirmed that salt water from
