{"id":218103,"date":"2016-01-07T04:00:19","date_gmt":"2016-01-06T18:00:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=218103"},"modified":"2016-01-07T04:00:19","modified_gmt":"2016-01-06T18:00:19","slug":"no-casualties-in-tonga-from-cyclone-ula","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/no-casualties-in-tonga-from-cyclone-ula\/","title":{"rendered":"No casualties in Tonga from Cyclone Ula"},"content":{"rendered":"

NUKU\u2018ALOFA, Tonga (Matangi Tonga)<\/strong>\u2014Initial reports have confirmed no casualties in Vava\u2019u which has escaped major damage to infrastructure, apart from fallen trees due to Tropical Cyclone Ula over the last 24 hours. A state of emergency issued only for Vava\u2019u and Ha\u2019apai remains in force to be reviewed. While Tonga\u2019s climate experts say that a lack of moisture to drive the system prevented it from intensifying into a devastating Category 4 or 5 storm.<\/p>\n

A state of emergency issued only for Vava\u2019u and Ha\u2019apai remains in force and is being reviewed while the cyclone remains in Tongan waters.<\/p>\n

Deputy Prime Minister Hon Siaosi Sovaleni in his capacity as Chairman of the National Emergency Management Committee said in a press conference this afternoon that no casualties were reported by police and they had checked with the hospital and verified with town officers in Vava\u2019u. He said the state of emergency declared last night was specifically only for Vava\u2019u and Ha\u2019apai and not the whole country.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe state of emergency remains until we have a complete picture of what is happening in Vava\u2019u, we will be reviewing it continuously to see whether it warrants to keep it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The committee would have a better idea later this afternoon of the damages when people went out to look at their houses.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had 11 evacuation centres, over 390 people were relocated to these evacuation centres. At about 3:21 am electricity was shut down for safety reasons but we are hoping to restore power this afternoon.\u201d<\/p>\n

An operational centre was based in the police headquarters last night but but now relocated to the Governor\u2019s office while an operation centre has been working from the NEMO office in Nuku\u2019alofa 24-hours a day, since 31 December.<\/p>\n

He said there were reports that many trees had fallen down. Some had been cleared especially those to the wharf and Lupepau\u2019u Airport in Vava\u2019u<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were expecting the worst last night as it was heading straight at Vava\u2019u and fortunately it got diverted a little, we are fortunate -We are very happy that there are no casualties,\u201d Hon. Sovaleni said.<\/p>\n

Ha\u2019apai \u2018Ofa Fa\u2019anunu, Director of Tonga Met said that Ha\u2019apai was experiencing its strongest gusts from Cyclone Ula early this afternoon, with winds up to 40 knots\u2014gusting to 60 knots (120kph). He said Tonga was lucky that a category 4 cyclone did not develop.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne thing that is interesting is that it has been trying to intensify. Toward the south there is no moisture. It needs a lot of moisture to develop but it was moving in from an area of low moisture. We were surprised it was still sustained. It is still a category three right now. The winds around in the upper atmosphere are very favourable for developing [the cyclone] but the moisture from down below to provide the energy for the system is not there\u2014just spinning, just very dry air coming up from down below brought up by the high. On another day it would probably have become a category five\u2014if the moisture had been present it would have been the right ingredients for development into a much stronger system,\u201d said \u2018Ofa.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NUKU\u2018ALOFA, Tonga (Matangi Tonga)\u2014Initial reports have confirmed no casualties in Vava\u2019u which has escaped major…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[9016,9017,67,9018],"class_list":["post-218103","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pacific","tag-nemo","tag-ofa-fa","tag-people","tag-tropical-cyclone-ula"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218103","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/28"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=218103"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218103\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=218103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=218103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=218103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}