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 in a reaction that would save all except one of their lives.
More than five weeks later, the children from Mango Island 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 plume of ash that was photographed from space.
Photo: AFP, courtesy of Rev. Kisini Toetu’u via Matangi Tonga
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 in a church hall.
Sione Vailea, 52, said that Mango Island is the prettiest place he knows, and nothing compares to it in all of Tonga. Only 14 families lived on the island, he said, all of them close together in a single village.
Each family owned a small, open-sided boat that they would use most mornings to to catch reef fish, snapper, octopus and lobster.
What they could not eat themselves they would take to the capital to sell, earning enough money to buy food and other necessities. For those fortunate enough to have a decent-sized engine on their boats, it was a six-hour return journey to the capital, but it could take double that time for those puttering along on 15 horsepower.
Mango Island is a slightly more than 32km from the Hunga Tonga Hunga Ha’apai undersea volcano, which in 2014 had rumbled to life, creating a small, new island and briefly disrupting air travel in a series of eruptions.
Those were nothing compared with 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 Island.
“There was no sign that there was going to be a tsunami, but our gut feeling was we needed to get up to the top, because we weren’t sure what was happening,” Vailea said.
One survivor, 72-year-old Sulaki Kafoika, said that once he got to the top of the hill, he looked back. He could see waves crashing over the tops of their houses. He had never experienced anything like it in his life.
Vailea scrambled 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.
On Mango Island, night’s darkness quickly followed the tsunami as the villagers remained huddled at the top of the hill. Throughout the night, the men held blankets above the women and children to protect them from the ash and small volcanic rocks that were pelting down. The tsunami had cut off all phone and Internet connections.
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, Vailea said. The adults ate nothing that day, or the next, as they waited.
Finally on Tuesday morning, a boat arrived from a neighboring island to check on them. Their neighbors had brought some fruits and vegetables.
The next day, they were all transported to the nearby island of Nomuka and then a few days later to Nuku’alofa, the capital, where they have been living since. None of them have been back to Mango Island.
Vailea said that some of the people of Mango Island want to return, while others want to start life afresh in Nuku’alofa or elsewhere. Some fear that the volcano could erupt again.
Vailea wants to return to Mango Island, where life can be hard but where you own your time, share everything with your neighbors, wake up in the morning and jump on your boat to fish.
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