2022 Life Logs, Day 20: Tonga in the News
Date: Thursday, January 20, 2022
Weather: Cloudy with Icy Rain and a Tad of Snow; High Temp 44, Low Temp 23 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA
As I am sure you are aware, five days ago, a “once in a millenium” underwater volcano erupted near the largest island in the Kingdom of Tonga doing what is reported as ‘significant damage’. And already when I turned the radio on in my car today, I heard a report on NPR about ‘rebuilding Tonga’. You know you just aren’t a very good person when hearing good news like ‘rebuilding’ makes you feel like someone just punched you in the gut. Don’t get me wrong. I am glad that New Zealand and relief effort groups are moving quickly. But five days after Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico, I had just learned that my son and his family were alive because there was little if any communication with the island. What I had heard for five days was the US government downplaying the severity of what happened on the island of Puerto Rico. Thirteen days after Maria hit, our president made excuses saying, “The response and recovery effort probably has never been seen for something like this. This is an island surrounded by water. Big water. Ocean water.” Well, Tonga is an island nation surrounded by ‘big water’ but good neighbor New Zealand is sending two Navy ships that will arrive there in three days after leaving New Zealand later this week. I will admit that the distance from New Zealand to Tonga is about 600 miles shorter than from the US to Puerto Rico, but I will bet that when those ships arrive, they will bring more than paper towels to the 100,000 people of Tonga. We couldn’t even manage to get tarps to the 3.3 million people in Puerto Rico to cover their roofless homes and prevent further water damage. It is reported that least 100 homes across the islands of Tonga have been damaged and at least 50 completely destroyed. Maria hit more than 786,000 homes in Puerto Rico, causing minor damage to some and completely sweeping away others. And this doesn’t even address the number of lives lost. It breaks my heart that we did not stand by Puerto Rico in her time of desperate need. I could go on and on, but I’ll end my ramp here and hope that we, the people of the United States of America, never let anything like that happen again. We need to elect good people to lead our country like the people of New Zealand did when they chose Jacinda Arden as their Prime Minister. And speaking of good people, this morning I read a guest opinion article in the New York Times by our national poet, Amanda Gorman. I highly recommend you read it. You can find it here: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/20/opinion/amanda-gorman-poem-inauguration.html?campaign_id=9&emc=edit_nn_20220120&instance_id=50806&nl=the-morning®i_id=99411509&segment_id=80225&te=1&user_id=df242d437bb6ffa5b9baeb94d90223b1
I finished Chapter 16 of The Voyage of Windbird this afternoon. That chapter was about Samoa and tomorrow I will be headed on to Tonga. Yes, Tonga, found its way into my life for the second time today. While Mark and I were in Samoa, there was an underwater earthquake about half-way between Samoa and Tonga. It was a 6.7 on the scale but was 27 miles below the surface of the sea and did not trigger a tsunami. Also, there was a volcanic eruption in northern Tonga two months prior while we were in American Samoa and we were warned to avoid the huge pumice field that was floating between Tonga and Fiji as we headed onward. Thankfully, we did not encounter that pumice field in our travels to Tonga. More about that trip tomorrow.
