Injured people arrive at a hospital in Vanuatu as there are unconfirmed reports of casualties after a powerful 7,3-magnitude earthquake struck the South Pacific island nation on Tuesday.
The tsunami warning was withdrawn less than two hours after the earthquake. With communications still down hours after the quake and official information scarce, accounts of casualties have begun to emerge on social media and through fragmented phone calls, the Associated Press reports.
The quake struck at a depth of 57 kilometers and was centered 30 kilometers west of Port Vila, the largest city in Vanuatu, a cluster of 80 islands home to about 330.000 people. The tremor was followed by a magnitude 5,5 aftershock near the same location.
The extent of the damage was not immediately clear, as phone lines and government websites remain down and official channels have not been updated, but reports of widespread devastation have leaked on social media.
Dan McGarry, a journalist based in Port Vila, told The Associated Press that he heard about one person killed in the quake from a police officer outside Vila's main hospital. McGarry saw three people on stretchers "in obvious desperation," he said.
Doctors were working "as quickly as they could" in a center outside the emergency department, he added. But the nation is not equipped for a mass casualty event, McGarry said.
Video shared by the Vanuatu Broadcasting and Television Corporation showed a crowd outside the hospital. Police, hospital and other public service phones are not working. There are no official reports of casualties.
Reports of people trapped inside buildings also could not be immediately confirmed. A video posted on social media appeared to show collapsed buildings in Port Vila, including one that had collapsed on top of cars. A spokesman for the Red Cross in Fiji said the head of the aid agency's office in Vanuatu had reported extensive damage before communications were cut.
A building housing a number of diplomatic missions in Port Vila - including those of the United States, Britain, France and New Zealand - suffered significant damage, New Zealand's foreign ministry said. Officials were in the process of registering New Zealand High Commission staff, a spokesman said.
A video posted on social media showed the building with some structural damage, including bent windows and debris that had fallen from the walls to the ground. Other photos and videos showed items and shelves that had fallen to store floors and landslides that appear to have blocked some roads.
Katie Greenwood, the head of the Fiji-based Red Cross Asia-Pacific regional office, told the Australian Broadcasting Corp.: "We haven't heard of any casualties at this point, but I'd be shocked if we don't hear bad news from the Port Vila".
McGarry said a "massive landslide" at the international shipping terminal was likely to hamper the country's recovery. The airport runway has also been damaged, he said.
Vanuatu's location on a belt—where the Indo-Australian tectonic plate moves beneath the Pacific plate—means earthquakes larger than magnitude 6 are not uncommon, and the country's buildings are designed to withstand earthquake damage.
"I think it could have been worse," McGarry said. But this was the most severe he had experienced during his 21 years in Vanuatu "by far", he said.
In the hours after the earthquake, the USGS declared that the tsunami threat had passed. The agency had earlier warned of waves of up to 1 meter above the high tide level.
Authorities in Australia and New Zealand, located in the Pacific Ocean, said there was no tsunami threat to their countries.
Source: newsbomb.gr
