Editor,

TONGA not ready for major tsunami. I agree to that, but not for the reasons given. Who or what is not ready? The equipment, the people, or the authorities?

The article claims: the equipment: there are no sirens, the radio station cannot be reached, the tidal gauge does not work, and more.

All nonsense. If a siren resounds in Tonga, people would think that they are testing again, (because that is what it will be 99% of the time, especially here in Tonga), and not bother. If those sirens would work in the first place.

It is a five minutes walk, less if you run, from the meteorological office to Radio Tonga. If it is really important, you could have done that instead of blaming the telephone line. Running will be better for your health anyway and much cheaper than a hotline, which for sure will also be broken when it is needed.

And the tidal gauge broken too is not less an indication of how much care you really are giving to these things.

I claim: the authorities. They are not ready. Them taking care of equipment has already been mentioned. Yelling that you are going to die when a 60 cm (use of imperial units is illegal in this country, so do not use them) wave approaches, while the tide is still low (a slack high tide would not happen that day until 12:00) is of course out of proportion. A simple remark would have been more than sufficient. The only people who might have been affected are those on the tidal flats. Where there would be no sirens or radios anyway. To close schools, markets, and what more is outrageous. I guess those who were selling their vegetables outside Talamahu were the only ones grateful, they had all customers for themselves.

I would say: luckily that the radio station cannot be requisited. In the way the authorities have in mind, they would have occupied it for hours, frighten the listeners, and more people would have died in panic stampedes than elsewhere. And how often I have to repeat: Tonga is not sensitive to tsunamis. We are not Japan, on the border of a continental shelf which magnifies such a wave tenfold; in the middle of the ocean it just passes largely undetected. Except if the originating eartquake is close by, as was the case with Niuataputapu. But then the wave is over you in minutes, and there will be no time for any warning.

I first want to see a more responsible education about tsunamis (and anything else) here in Tonga, authorities first, before any hype.

Firitia Velt,

Fasi & Afi.

firitia [at] tau [dot] olunga [dot] to ( firitia [at] tau [dot] olunga [dot] to)