What happened

The 15 January 2022 eruption of the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai underwater volcano, one of the most powerful volcanic explosions in over a century, triggered tsunami waves and ruptured Tonga's only international submarine fibre-optic cable roughly 37 km offshore, as well as the separate domestic cable linking outer islands to the capital Nuku'alofa. The country was left almost entirely cut off from international phone and internet contact for days while damage assessment and repair vessels were organised; officials initially cautioned repairs could take weeks. A repair ship restored the international cable on 22 February 2022, about five weeks after the rupture — itself an unusually fast repair given the vessel had to travel from Papua New Guinea. The shorter domestic cable serving the Ha'apai and Vava'u island groups proved harder to fix and remained offline for roughly 18 months, with those communities relying on satellite links in the interim. This was a natural-disaster-caused infrastructure failure, not an attack.

When cited sources give different casualty, damage or spill figures for this event, they’re reported side by side above rather than merged into one number. See how confidence levels work.