Powerful earthquake has struck the Pacific island of Vanuatu, causing severe damage to buildings in the capital Port Vila, including one housing foreign embassies.
The 7.3-magnitude quake struck at a depth of 57km about 30km off the coast of Efate, Vanuatu's main island, at 12:47pm (0147 GMT), according to the US Geological Survey. The ground floor of a building housing the US and French embassies was crushed beneath the upper floors, resident Michael Thompson told AFP by satellite phone after posting pictures of the destruction on social media. "There are people in buildings in the city. There were bodies there when we went by," Thompson said. A landslide on one road covered a bus, he said, "so there are obviously fatalities there." The quake also collapsed at least two bridges, said Thompson, who runs a business in Vanuatu, and the ground floor of a concrete building housing diplomatic missions was leveled. “That’s gone. It’s just completely flat. The top three floors are still standing, but they’ve fallen,” he said. “If there was anyone there at the time, they’re gone,” he said. Most mobile networks were down, Thompson said. “The support we need from abroad is medical evacuation and qualified rescuers, people who can operate in earthquakes,” he said. Video footage posted by Thompson and verified by AFP showed uniformed rescuers and emergency vehicles working on a building where an external roof had collapsed onto several parked cars and trucks. The city’s streets were littered with broken glass and other debris from damaged buildings, the footage showed.
A tsunami warning was issued after the quake, with waves of up to one meter predicted for some areas of Vanuatu, but it was soon lifted by the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center. Waves of less than 30 centimeters above high tide were forecast for other Pacific island nations, including Fiji, Kiribati, New Caledonia, the Solomon Islands and Tuvalu. Earthquakes are common in Vanuatu, a low-lying archipelago of 320,000 people that straddles the seismic Ring of Fire, an arc of intense tectonic activity that stretches across Southeast Asia and the Pacific. Vanuatu is ranked as one of the countries most vulnerable to natural disasters such as earthquakes, storm surges, floods and tsunamis, according to the annual World Risk Report. | BGNES
