By — Nick Schifrin Nick Schifrin Leave your feedback Share Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/the-latest-on-the-state-of-tonga-after-volcanic-eruption-tsunami-swept-islands Email Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest Tumblr Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Transcript Audio Australia and New Zealand sent out surveillance flights to Tonga Monday, in the wake of an enormous undersea volcano eruption on Saturday. Communication with the South Pacific island chain remains largely cut off, but there is word of significant damage. Nick Schifrin reports. Read the Full Transcript Notice: Transcripts are machine and human generated and lightly edited for accuracy. They may contain errors. Judy Woodruff: Australia and New Zealand sent out surveillance flights to Tonga today in the wake of an enormous undersea volcano eruption on Saturday. Communication with the South Pacific island chain remains largely cut off, but there is word of significant damage.Nick Schifrin has our report. Nick Schifrin: A blast so massive, it was seen from space.Satellite imagery caught the explosion and a ball of ash billowing above and beyond the Tongan Islands. Before the blast, thick plumes filled the sky, shooting up 12 miles above sea level. On Tonga, the tsunami arrived quickly. Communications are almost completely down, and the death toll is unknown, but one confirmed dead, Briton Angela Glover, who ran a rescue dog charity.Her brother Nick spoke in the U.K.Nick Eleini, Brother of Angela Glover: I haven't got the words in my vocabulary to even describe how we're feeling at the moment. Nick Schifrin: The explosion caused waves around the world. In Pacifica, California, harbors flooded. In Japan's Sakihama Port, fishermen looked on as their boats sank. And, in Peru, coastal areas flooded, and two women drowned after waves swept them away.In total, around the world, the explosion affected at least 11 countries and territories. Ed Venzke, Smithsonian Global Volcanism Program: It's a rare explosion that reaches the stratosphere. And that's what got everyone's attention. Nick Schifrin: Ed Venzke is a senior researcher with the Smithsonian's Global Volcanism Program.He says the eruption comes from a chamber of magma forcing itself through rock. Ed Venzke: Just like a bottle of soda, the gas that's contained in that liquid magma starts to expand. And so it reaches the surface right with the magma and start an eruption.And it's when that hot magma hits the water, the water expands and creates its own explosion. Nick Schifrin: A volcanic explosion that's believed to be the largest in three decades.For the "PBS NewsHour," I'm Nick Schifrin. Judy Woodruff: Remarkable pictures. Listen to this Segment Watch Watch the Full Episode PBS NewsHour from Jan 17, 2022 By — Nick Schifrin Nick Schifrin Nick Schifrin is PBS NewsHour’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Correspondent. He leads NewsHour’s daily foreign coverage, including multiple trips to Ukraine since the full-scale invasion, and has created weeklong series for the NewsHour from nearly a dozen countries. The PBS NewsHour series “Inside Putin’s Russia” won a 2017 Peabody Award and the National Press Club’s Edwin M. Hood Award for Diplomatic Correspondence. In 2020 Schifrin received the American Academy of Diplomacy’s Arthur Ross Media Award for Distinguished Reporting and Analysis of Foreign Affairs. He was a member of the NewsHour teams awarded a 2021 Peabody for coverage of COVID-19, and a 2023 duPont Columbia Award for coverage of Afghanistan and Ukraine. Prior to PBS NewsHour, Schifrin was Al Jazeera America's Middle East correspondent. He led the channel’s coverage of the 2014 war in Gaza; reported on the Syrian war from Syria's Turkish, Lebanese and Jordanian borders; and covered the annexation of Crimea. He won an Overseas Press Club award for his Gaza coverage and a National Headliners Award for his Ukraine coverage. From 2008-2012, Schifrin served as the ABC News correspondent in Afghanistan and Pakistan. In 2011 he was one of the first journalists to arrive in Abbottabad, Pakistan, after Osama bin Laden’s death and delivered one of the year’s biggest exclusives: the first video from inside bin Laden’s compound. His reporting helped ABC News win an Edward R. Murrow award for its bin Laden coverage. Schifrin is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a board member of the Overseas Press Club Foundation. He has a Bachelor’s degree from Columbia University and a Master of International Public Policy degree from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). @nickschifrin