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Cyclone Rene slams into Tonga
Posted: 15 February 2010 1907 hrs
A teenager walks around the town area with his umbrella during a drizzle as Tropical Cyclone Rene approaches American Samoa
NUKU'ALOFA : Cyclone Rene slammed into the Pacific island nation of Tonga on Monday with winds of over 160 kilometres (100 miles) an hour, disrupting power and communications and damaging buildings and crops.
The storm battered the capital Nuku'alofa on Monday evening, sending sheets of metal flying through the air, bringing trees and power poles down over roads and flooding low lying areas, police commissioner Chris Kelley said.
National Disaster Management Office deputy director Maliu Takai said it was impossible to go outside and the noise was deafening as the storm struck the main island of Tongatapu, where about 70 per cent of the country's 110,000 population live.
"It's like some kind of locomotive is running around all over the place," Takai told Radio New Zealand.
"Hopefully this is the worst part of it."
Kelley said at about 8 pm (0700 GMT) there was a lull as the eye of the storm passed over the capital, which lies on the northern side of Tongatapu.
"It's completely calm, no wind, no rain -- completely still. It's quite eerie really. For 50 to 55 minutes we've had a real battering with very strong winds, very, very heavy rain and now it's dead calm," he told Radio New Zealand before phone lines to Nuku'alofa went dead.
The Fiji Meteorological Service earlier downgraded the cyclone from category four on the five-point scale to category three but it was still packing winds of 160 kilometres an hour, with occasional gusts up to 230 kilometres an hour.
The cyclone is forecast to slowly move away to the southwest of Tongatapu overnight and gradually weaken.
There were no reports of casualties Monday but the ferocious winds caused widespread damage in the central Ha'apai group of islands and the northern Vava'u group.
Government radio in Tonga reported that most fruit trees and many other crops had been destroyed and some buildings had collapsed or were damaged in the Ha'apai islands. Most communications and power had also been knocked out.
The extent of damage was unclear in both the Ha'apai and Vava'u groups, although early reports suggested devastation in Vava'u had been lighter than expected, given the strength of the winds.
"This is just according to reports from some people we have managed to get in touch with," Takai said.
"We won't be able to do an assessment until tomorrow, which hopefully we can do with aerial surveillance."
The government had been warning Nuku'alofa residents of the cyclone for two days and many seafront residents boarded up their windows and shops, offices and schools were closed all day on Monday.
On the eastern side of the international dateline, in American Samoa, a 50-year-old maintenance worker was killed on Friday when he fell from the roof of a three-storey building while trying to secure the building from Cyclone Rene. - AFP/ms
Posted: 15 February 2010 1907 hrs
A teenager walks around the town area with his umbrella during a drizzle as Tropical Cyclone Rene approaches American Samoa
NUKU'ALOFA : Cyclone Rene slammed into the Pacific island nation of Tonga on Monday with winds of over 160 kilometres (100 miles) an hour, disrupting power and communications and damaging buildings and crops.
The storm battered the capital Nuku'alofa on Monday evening, sending sheets of metal flying through the air, bringing trees and power poles down over roads and flooding low lying areas, police commissioner Chris Kelley said.
National Disaster Management Office deputy director Maliu Takai said it was impossible to go outside and the noise was deafening as the storm struck the main island of Tongatapu, where about 70 per cent of the country's 110,000 population live.
"It's like some kind of locomotive is running around all over the place," Takai told Radio New Zealand.
"Hopefully this is the worst part of it."
Kelley said at about 8 pm (0700 GMT) there was a lull as the eye of the storm passed over the capital, which lies on the northern side of Tongatapu.
"It's completely calm, no wind, no rain -- completely still. It's quite eerie really. For 50 to 55 minutes we've had a real battering with very strong winds, very, very heavy rain and now it's dead calm," he told Radio New Zealand before phone lines to Nuku'alofa went dead.
The Fiji Meteorological Service earlier downgraded the cyclone from category four on the five-point scale to category three but it was still packing winds of 160 kilometres an hour, with occasional gusts up to 230 kilometres an hour.
The cyclone is forecast to slowly move away to the southwest of Tongatapu overnight and gradually weaken.
There were no reports of casualties Monday but the ferocious winds caused widespread damage in the central Ha'apai group of islands and the northern Vava'u group.
Government radio in Tonga reported that most fruit trees and many other crops had been destroyed and some buildings had collapsed or were damaged in the Ha'apai islands. Most communications and power had also been knocked out.
The extent of damage was unclear in both the Ha'apai and Vava'u groups, although early reports suggested devastation in Vava'u had been lighter than expected, given the strength of the winds.
"This is just according to reports from some people we have managed to get in touch with," Takai said.
"We won't be able to do an assessment until tomorrow, which hopefully we can do with aerial surveillance."
The government had been warning Nuku'alofa residents of the cyclone for two days and many seafront residents boarded up their windows and shops, offices and schools were closed all day on Monday.
On the eastern side of the international dateline, in American Samoa, a 50-year-old maintenance worker was killed on Friday when he fell from the roof of a three-storey building while trying to secure the building from Cyclone Rene. - AFP/ms
