Island paradise's fate hangs in balance

WELLINGTON, New Zealand－The first two booms from the volcano were scary enough, but the third explosion was immense, sending everyone from the village running from their homes.

Even now, more than five weeks later, children from Mango Island still often run or cower when they hear a thunderclap or loud noise.

The small island in Tonga was one of the closest places to the Jan 15 South Pacific volcanic eruption, an event so massive it sent out a sonic boom that could be heard in Alaska and a mushroom plume of ash that was seen in startling images taken from space. On Mango Island, every single home was destroyed by the tsunami that followed.

All 62 survivors were rescued by boat and moved to Tonga's capital Nuku'alofa, where they have been living together since in a church hall. Most of the time, they had been in lockdown after Tonga experienced its first coronavirus outbreak.

Sione Vailea, 52, said Mango is the prettiest place he knows and nothing compares to it in all of Tonga.

Just 14 families lived on the island, he said, and all of them close together in a single village.

Mango is a little over 32 kilometers from the Hunga Tonga Hunga Ha'apai undersea volcano, which back in late 2014 had rumbled to life, creating a small new island and briefly disrupting air travel in a series of eruptions.

Massive boom

But those were nothing compared to the scale of eruption that took place on that Saturday evening in January. When the islanders heard the third massive boom, they began running from their low-lying village up a nearby hill, the highest point on Mango.

As the island's appointed town officer, Vailea checked to make sure everybody gathered. He noticed one family was missing.

Vailea scrambled back down the hill and saw the wife, two daughters and son of a 65-year-old man coming up. The man was gone, taken by the waves.

Another survivor, 72-year-old Sulaki Kafoika, said he looked back once he got to the top of the hill. He could see waves crashing over the tops of their houses. He had never experienced anything like that in his life.

They spent a night on the hill. The next day, they found that all of their boats were wrecked and they had almost no food. After searching the village, they found two small bags of rice, which they cooked for the children.

Finally on Tuesday morning, a boat arrived from a neighboring island to check on them.

Vailea has been meeting regularly with Tongan officials, but said the final decision of whether they will be able to return and resettle on Mango rests with Tonga's government and monarch King Tupou VI.

Mango islanders hope they will get a decision within the coming weeks.