Science advice during natural disaster response in Pacific Island countries : Lessons from the Hunga eruption and tsunami of January 2022
Shane Cronin
School of Environment
Abstract
Hunga volcano was a previously little-known submarine volcano located 65km NW of Nuku’alofa, Kingdom of Tonga. It had small eruptions with local consequences in 2009 and 2015, before producing the globally most explosive eruption in the last 140 years on 15 January 2022. This coincided with the country being closed to international visitors in response to the COVID19 pandemic. Both the magnitude of the eruption and its complex aftermath around the world, along with restriction on international visitors strongly pressured the science capability in-country. Important questions from Government around ongoing hazard management, and strong international pressure for data to understand distal impacts of the event quickly overwhelmed the Tongan government scientists. Similarly, intense media pressure provided huge stress. As an external scientist, brought in on one of the first repatriation flights in early March, I describe the lessons learnt from a three-month deployment for training, data gathering and hazard evaluation/presentation both locally and internationally. While specialist knowledge of all possible hazard events cannot reasonably be expected in small island nations, coordinated advice and flexible approaches to science provision externally are needed. Ideally, long deployments of people that are able to work within local cultures and structures are important to build trust and long term effectiveness of hazard management information.
https://www.auckland.ac.nz/en/news/2022/05/16/shane-cronin-volcanologist-in-tonga.html