Page 65 - Australian Defence Magazine May 2022

MAY 2022 | WWW.AUSTRALIANDEFENCE.COM.AU
SEAPOWER HADR 65 LEFT: A landing craft from HMAS Adelaide beaches at
Pangaimotu Island as part of Operation Tonga Assist 2022
and arrived on 26 January with 23 COVID cases reported on board, to begin working with Tonga and New Zealand to provide relief and emergency supplies.
Republic of Fiji Military Forces (RFMF) personnel also joined Adelaide soon after, and RFMF engineers along with a contingent from the 2nd Combat Engineer Regiment to- gether conducted clean-up operations on the island of Atata.
It was disclosed by the ABC on 31 January that Adelaide suf- fered a major electrical power outage which left the ship strand- ed, the details of which will be explored later in this article.
Equipment failures aside, the Defence spokesperson told ADM that as of 22 February, Adelaide and her crew had unloaded more than 120 tonnes of stores in the capital of Nuku’alofa and on the island of ‘Eua which had been un- able to reopen its port following the disaster.
The ship’s embarked Australian Army CH-47F Chinook and Navy MRH 90 Taipan helicopters assisted in conduct- ing reconnaissance, delivering equipment and dropping personnel and stores. One CH-47F helicopter, for example, was used to transport DIGICEL technicians to Kao Island to repair digital communications connectivity.
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