A wave hit him and he spent 27 hours adrift on the high seas. He did not answer his son’s cries to prevent him from trying to save him. But he survived.

A 57-year-old retired carpenter with mobility problems survived the devastating tsunami in Tonga last weekend after being swept away by a wave and hanging out at sea for 27 hours.

Lisala Folau, one of the 60 inhabitants of the island of Atata, was swept into the sea by the tsunami at 7 in the afternoon, shortly after receiving the alert from the authorities, according to what he himself told in a radio interview broadcast this Thursday. on Tonga’s Broadcom Broadcasting channel.

Although he was warned and took refuge with other family members at the top of a tree, he went down too soon, believing that the danger had passed and a wave took him away.

“Keep in mind that I am disabled. I can’t walk well and when I do I think even a baby can go faster than me,” he said, according to a translation posted on Facebook by a Broadcom Broadcasting writer.

Without answering the cries of his son

The retired carpenter stated that at that moment he decided not to answer his son’s cries, fearing that he would put his own life in danger by jumping into the water to rescue him, and decided to let himself be carried away by the sea current to try to survive.

“I just floated, while the big waves that came hit me,” said the survivor, who arrived on the island of Tongatapu, 7.5 kilometers from Atata, around 10 p.m. on Sunday, that is, 27 hours after the sea ​​will drag him.

Atata was one of the small islands completely destroyed by the tsunami , caused by the thunderous eruption of the Hunga Tonga Hunga Ha’apa submarine volcano, the most violent recorded on the planet in the last three decades.

A country incommunicado for five days

Folau’s story is one of the first direct testimonies of the tragedy that reaches the media after the country has spent five days practically incommunicado due to the breakage of an essential submarine cable for the telephone line and internet connections.

At the moment the death of three people has been registered in Tonga due to the disaster, although the damage has not yet been quantified due to the isolation of a good part of its 169 islands and the difficulty of the rescue teams to access the most affected places.

 

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