Rabaul - City of Papua New Guinea

Rabaul is a township in East New Britain province, Papua New Guinea. The town was the provincial capital and most important settlement in the province until it was destroyed in 1994 by falling ash of a volcanic eruption. During the eruption, ash was sent thousands of feet into the air. It caused rain which caused buildings to collapse. 80% of the buildings in Rabaul were collapsed. After the eruption the capital was moved to Kokopo, about 20 kilometres away. Rabaul is continually threatened by volcanic activity due to being built on the edge of Rabaul caldera, a flooded caldera of a large volcano.

Rabaul was the headquarters of German New Guinea until captured by the British Commonwealth during World War I, when it became the capital of the Australian mandated Territory of New Guinea until 1937. During World War II it was captured by the Japanese in 1942, and it became the main base of Japanese military and naval activity in the South Pacific. Settlements and military installations around the edge of the caldera are often collectively referred to as Rabaul despite the old town of Rabaul itself being reduced to practical insignificance by the volcanic eruption in 1994.

Rabaul's proximity to its volcanoes has always been a source of concern. In 1878 before being established as a town an eruption caused the formation of Vulcan in the harbour.

In 1910 the German colonial government during the administration of Governor Albert Hahl relocated offices, the district court, a hospital, and customs and postal facilities from Herbertshöhe to Simpsonhafen. That settlement was thus substantially enlarged with official buildings and housing and renamed Rabaul, meaning mangrove in Kuanua as the new town was partially built on a reclaimed mangrove swamp.

At the outset of World War I, at the behest of Great Britain, Australia occupied German New Guinea with the volunteer Australian Naval and Military Expeditionary Force. Following Germany's defeat at the end of the war, the occupied territory was delegated in 1920 to Australia as a League of Nations Mandate. Rabaul became the capital of the Territory of New Guinea.

In 1983 and 1984 the town was ready for evacuation when the volcanoes started to heat up. Nothing happened until 19 September 1994, when again Tavurvur and Vulcan erupted, destroying the airport and covering most of the town with heavy ashfall. There was only 19 hours of warning before the eruption and the city's inhabitants self-evacuated before the eruption. Only a handful of people were killed - several of them by lightning from the eruptive column. The advance planning and evacuation drills helped keep the death toll low. Most of the buildings in the southeastern half of Rabaul collapsed due to the weight of ash on their roofs.

The last eruption prompted the relocation of the provincial capital to Kokopo, the former German Herbertshöhe. Nonetheless, Rabaul is slowing rebuilding in the danger zone. Vulcan has remained dormant since the eruption, while small-scale eruptions from Tavurvur occur intermittently. A government volcano observatory is maintained in the northern portion of Rabaul. It also has responsibility for monitoring the other volcanoes on New Britain and nearby islands in addition to the Rabaul caldera.