Tsunami

Hi folks, I'm fine. Thanks for all of your emails. I woke up this morning only to hear the tail end of the story that an earthquake measuring 7.8 on the Richter scale had hit Tonga, which is very close to Fiji and NZ.
Shortly after the earthquake hit, apparently, a tsunami warning went out to Fiji and NZ, and Australia was put on alert as well. Sadly, the same warning DID NOT get through to Tonga itself, as the earthquake had knocked out the power feed to the warning system. Yikes. Luckily no one was hurt and there turned out to be no tsunami threat.
Interestingly, the town of Gisborne, which is one of the places I visited recently on my trip through the East Cape (see the photos of surfers), got mixed messages from Radio NZ and others that a tsunami was headed straight for them and self-evacuated:

'Gisborne residents head for the hills' http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,3657260a10,00.html

We're all fine, though, and carrying on as normal...:)

Love,
Claire