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The volcano Hunga Tonga Hunga Ha'apai before eruption
Photo: Maxar Technologies/AP
After the eruption of the submarine volcano Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai, it is still difficult to make contact with the Ha'apai archipelago in the Pacific.
Apparently, the undersea cable that connects the islands to the world's data and phone networks has been disrupted by the eruption.
The effects of the tsunami that followed the eruption, an underwater landslide, or currents triggered by the events may have severed the 827-kilometer fiber-optic cable that connects Tonga to Fiji, The Information suggests.
It was only a few years ago that the remote islands got broadband connection via that cable.
The project cost a total of 32.8 million dollars (PDF).
The next special ship is thousands of kilometers away
At first there was still hope that the fiber optic connection was possibly only disrupted due to power outages after the eruption.
However, line tests soon showed that it must actually be a broken cable.
Had it been on land it could have been easily repaired.
But on Monday, Craige Sloots from the cable network operator Southern Cross Cable Network confirmed to the New Zealand Herald that the broken cable was located 37 kilometers off the coast of Tonga in the Pacific.
This makes restoring the connection much more difficult, because the next ship suitable for such work, the CS Reliance, is around 4000 kilometers away in the port of Port Morseby in Papua New Guinea.
The journey from there to the crisis region will take eight to nine days, says Sloots.
But the mission seems important, because after the volcanic eruption, communication "continues to be the biggest problem," writes the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
Satellite phones hardly help
Almost exactly two years ago, when the archipelago was cut off from Internet and telephone connections due to a cable connection failure, a local provider was able to reroute the data connections via satellite Internet.
At least basic communication with the outside world was possible.
The boss of that local Internet provider said at the time: “The country is functioning normally internally, but it is largely cut off from the rest of the world.
It's like in the Dark Ages« (read more here).
At the moment, however, even this emergency solution does not seem to be working.
According to the OCHA information, satellite phones on the islands are currently not working reliably either.
The massive ash cloud from the volcano and the resulting electrostatic charges could be the reason for this.
It could take about two weeks until the repair of the communication cable is complete, "if everything goes well," Craige Sloots told the Reuters news agency.
The special ship would hook the cable from the bottom of the ocean on board, where it would be patched.
However, the prerequisite for this would be that the team receives the appropriate security clearances.
After all, the ability to carry out the repair would "depend on volcanic activity" in the area.
