Tullamore Lions Club donates €2,000 towards disaster relief in Tonga

On the 15th of January last, the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai undersea volcano erupted in a blast 600 times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. It prompted a tsunami.

Local journalist, Marian Kupu, described, in the International edition of ‘The Guardian’, the damage caused, as she drove out west on the main island, after the tsunami.

“Coconut trees that stood upright, now lay in rows bent to the right, almost parallel to the ground, in the direction the tsunami waves pushed them down.

“Everything on the western side of the road-the direction from which the tsunami hit – had been lifted up, uprooted, carried across the road and smashed into tress on the eastern side.

“Timber, bushes, cars, roofs, they were all trapped on the coconut trees on the road; houses, they were all on the other side of the road.

“Everything is just dead. There is just mud, dust everywhere. The houses are just gone… some houses are still standing, but everything inside the house is destroyed from the seawater. Beds, chairs, couches, everything gone. I mean, wet or destroyed, so it’s not livable.

“Drinking water is a huge concern, given that the ash has blanketed the island, but so is food, given many people are reliant on plantations, which have been destroyed by the disaster.

“I may stay calm, but we need help. We’ve lost lives, we’ve lost homes…we have damaged roads. We need aid and we don’t know how long we’re going to be living with this and how are we going to (get through it), not only physical stuff but mentally… because we have never experienced this.”

Then, Covid-19 visited the island, for the first time. Due to the remoteness of the group of islands that make up Tonga, the pandemic hadn’t reached there. It seems that the well-intentioned relief services brought the infection with them.

Lions Clubs International is a worldwide network of Lions Clubs that can respond speedily to disasters of the kind experienced in Tonga. Tullamore Lions Club was able to contribute €2,000, on behalf of the people of the Tullamore area, to the Tonga Disaster Appeal. When included in the donations from Lions Clubs all over the world a very sizeable sum of money will have been raised. Since Lions Clubs International directly manages the Disaster Relief Fund every cent donated gets to the good cause it was intended for. Tullamore Lions Club President, Paul Cullen, commented. “We are forever grateful to the good people of our area whose generosity enables us to support deserving calls for help where it is most needed”