The Tonga volcanic eruption unleashed explosive forces that dwarfed the power of the Hiroshima atomic bomb, NASA scientists have said, as survivors on January 15 described how the devastating blast "messed up our brains,” Agence France Press (AFP) reported.
The NASA Earth Observatory said the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai volcano spewed debris as high as 40 kilometers into the atmosphere during the eruption that triggered huge tsunami waves. It was even heard in Alaska, at 9,000 kilometers.
NASA announced the eruption was hundreds of times stronger than the US atomic bomb dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima in August 1945, which was estimated to be about 15 kilotons (15,000 tons) of TNT.
"We think the amount of energy released by the eruption was equivalent to somewhere between five to 30 megatons (five to 30 million tons) of TNT," NASA scientist Jim Garvin said in a press release.
The agency said the eruption "obliterated" the volcanic island about 65 kilometers north of the Tongan capital Nuku'alofa. It blanketed the island kingdom of about 100,000 in a layer of toxic ash, poisoning drinking water, destroying crops and completely wiping out at least two villages.
It also claimed at least three lives in Tonga and resulted in the drowning deaths of two beachgoers in Peru after freak waves.
"The shockwave from the eruption just messed up our brains. The coating of fine grey grime covering everything was proving difficult to live with,” Nuku'alofa-based journalist Mary Lyn Fonua told AFP.
