With a cooperative pact signed earlier this year, the highest ranking military official in Kingdom of Tonga, Brig. Gen. Tau’aika Uta Atu, visited Carson City Monday, the first stop on his tour of Nevada.
The Nevada National Guard and the South Pacific island nation are one of the newest official relationships created in the National Guard’s State Partnership Program, a Department of Defense function that links a state’s National Guard with the armed forces or equivalent of a partner country in a cooperative, mutually beneficial agreement.
Comprised of more than 170 islands, Tonga is located between Hawaii and New Zealand. Despite obvious differences, the desert state of Nevada and the tropical island nation of Tonga share many challenges and issues.
Both Nevada and Tonga have large population concentrations separated by large tracts of uninhabited land that create challenges such as delivery of basic government services and humanitarian relief during times of natural disaster.
The agreement was signed in April of this year. In July eight airmen from the Nevada Air National Guard joined 160 men and women from seven nations to provide humanitarian assistance to the citizens of Tonga as part of Operation Pacific Angel-Tonga. The Nevada Guard delegation provided airmen who are experts in medical care and civil engineering.
Led by Brig. Gen. Tau’aika Uta Atu, the group of Tonga military leaders toured the Carson City Nevada National Guard facility, seeing the Joint Operation Center and the Emergency Command Center, arenas established for state and national emergencies.
“I’m very impressed by what we saw today, especially in the areas of emergency response. Thanks General Burks for inviting us today,” said Gen. Tau’aika Uta Atu.
The Tongan defense leader met with Nevada National Guard’s top brass Monday including Brig. General Bill Burks and was to meet later with Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval’s staff. The governor was in Las Vegas on Monday.
Burks said the Nevada Guard is an ideal partner for Tonga because it creates a shared sense of responsibility when dealing with security issues, humanitarian assistance and domestic response goals.
“Nevada has a vast amount of land with small patches of water, where Tonga has a vast amount of water with small patches of land. Both make security, infrastructure and the provision of goods and services a monumental task,” Burks said recently in Battle Born, a quarterly magazine of the Nevada National Guard.
Earthquakes and flooding are natural events that both have in common. At Lake Tahoe, for example, a major earthquake centered nearby could trigger a tsunami-like event at the alpine lake, one of the deepest in North America. Because Tahoe sits in a bowl, a sudden, sharp pulse or thrust of the earth could pose disaster with the lake’s water not having anywhere to go but to the sides, much like dropping a stone into a tub.
Gen. Tau’aika Uta Atu was shown a simulation of such an event at Tahoe and was told that water could rush river systems causing a swift rise through the valleys, posing disaster scenarios. Drawing on disaster plans it has created, the Nevada Guard will share its disaster response knowledge to the Tongan Defense Force.
“The Nevada Guard includes some incredible resources that allow the military to assist civilian authorities in time of need,” Burks told Battle Born. “A symbiotic relationship of their resources and our capabilities will benefit both Tong and Nevada.”
