Hundreds of people yesterday were evacuated from their homes in Tonga when severe tropical cyclone Ula slammed into the tiny Pacific kingdom.
However, there were no casualties after Tongan Prime Minister Akilisi Pohiva declared a state of emergency before the storm hit “in order to prevent or minimize the loss of human life, illness or injury.”
The northern island of Vava’u took the brunt of the category three cyclone which was packing winds of up to 150kph.
“We are very happy that there are no casualties, police checked with hospitals and town officers to confirm that,” National Emergency Management Office chairman Siaosi Sovaleni told reporters at a news conference.
“We had 11 evacuation centers, over 390 people were relocated to these evacuation centers,” he said.
The storm brought down trees, damaged crops and the main airport was closed to domestic flights.
Tonga meteorological office director Ofa Fa’anunu said it was fortunate there was little moisture around which would have intensified the severity of the storm.
“On another day it would probably have become a [maximum] category five,” he said.
“If the moisture had been present it would have been the right ingredients for development into a much stronger system,” he added.
The official Tropical Cyclone Warning Center said in an advisory that Ula had “very destructive winds” with “very high to phenomenal seas” causing flooding in low-lying areas. The hurricane warning for Vava’u was downgraded to a storm warning early yesterday afternoon.
The tropical cyclone warnings for other island groups in Tonga were also downgraded.
The storm is expected to weaken today as it heads towards Fiji. One year ago Tonga was hit by Cyclone Ian which left one person dead, 4,000 homeless and destroyed crops on outlying islands.
CONDITIONS: The Russian president said a deal that was scuppered by ‘elites’ in the US and Europe should be revived, as Ukraine was generally satisfied with it Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday said that he was ready for talks with Ukraine, after having previously rebuffed the idea of negotiations while Kyiv’s offensive into the Kursk region was ongoing. Ukraine last month launched a cross-border incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, sending thousands of troops across the border and seizing several villages. Putin said shortly after there could be no talk of negotiations. Speaking at a question and answer session at Russia’s Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, Putin said that Russia was ready for talks, but on the basis of an aborted deal between Moscow’s and Kyiv’s negotiators reached in Istanbul, Turkey,
In months, Lo Yuet-ping would bid farewell to a centuries-old village he has called home in Hong Kong for more than seven decades. The Cha Kwo Ling village in east Kowloon is filled with small houses built from metal sheets and stones, as well as old granite buildings, contrasting sharply with the high-rise structures that dominate much of the Asian financial hub. Lo, 72, has spent his entire life here and is among an estimated 860 households required to move under a government redevelopment plan. He said he would miss the rich history, unique culture and warm interpersonal kindness that defined life in
AERIAL INCURSIONS: The incidents are a reminder that Russia’s aggressive actions go beyond Ukraine’s borders, Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha said Two NATO members on Sunday said that Russian drones violated their airspace, as one reportedly flew into Romania during nighttime attacks on neighboring Ukraine, while another crashed in eastern Latvia the previous day. A drone entered Romanian territory early on Sunday as Moscow struck “civilian targets and port infrastructure” across the Danube in Ukraine, the Romanian Ministry of National Defense said. It added that Bucharest had deployed F-16 warplanes to monitor its airspace and issued text alerts to residents of two eastern regions. It also said investigations were underway of a potential “impact zone” in an uninhabited area along the Romanian-Ukrainian border. There
A French woman whose husband has admitted to enlisting dozens of strangers to rape her while she was drugged on Thursday told his trial that police had saved her life by uncovering the crimes. “The police saved my life by investigating Mister Pelicot’s computer,” Gisele Pelicot told the court in the southern city of Avignon, referring to her husband — one of 51 of her alleged abusers on trial — by only his surname. Speaking for the first time since the extraordinary trial began on Monday, Gisele Pelicot, now 71, revealed her emotion in almost 90 minutes of testimony, recounting her mysterious
RSS