A powerful earthquake hit the Pacific nation of Vanuatu yesterday, smashing buildings in the capital, Port Vila, including one used by foreign embassies, with a witness telling of bodies lying in the city.
The magnitude 7.3 quake struck at a depth of 57km, about 30km off the coast of Efate, Vanuatu’s main island, at 12:47pm, the US Geological Survey said.
A magnitude 5.5 aftershock struck minutes later, followed by a string of lesser tremors — shaking the low-lying archipelago of 320,000 people that lies in the quake-prone Pacific Rim of Fire.
Photo: AFP
The first floor of a four-story concrete block in Port Vila — used by US, French, British, Australian and New Zealand diplomatic missions — was flattened, photographs showed. US and French embassy staff are safe, the two nations said.
The US closed its embassy until further notice. France said its mission was “destroyed.”
“There’s people in the buildings in town. There were bodies there when we walked past,” resident Michael Thompson said by satellite phone after posting images of the destruction on social media.
A landslide on one road had covered a bus, he said, “so there’s obviously some deaths there.”
As well as destroying the first floor of the diplomatic building, the quake also knocked down at least two bridges and toppled other buildings, Thompson said.
The first floor of the embassy block “no longer exists,” he said.
“It is just completely flat. The top three floors are still holding, but they have dropped. If there was anyone in there at the time, then they’re gone,” said Thompson, who runs a zipline adventure business in Vanuatu.
Some people injured in the quake were driven in flat-bed trucks to a Port Vila hospital where others lay in stretchers outside or sat on plastic chairs, their arms and heads wrapped in bandages, image from public television VBTC showed.
Landslips sent tonnes of earth and large rocks tumbling down a steep hill over the international shipping terminal, images showed.
The port buildings did not appear to be damaged.
Australian and other regional airlines — including Qantas, Jetstar, Virgin Australia and Fiji Airways — diverted or suspended flights, some citing reports of possible damage to the facilities and runway.
The quake cut off most mobile networks on the Pacific island, Thompson said.
“They’re just cracking on with a rescue operation. The support we need from overseas is medical evacuation and skilled rescue, kind of people that can operate in earthquakes,” he said.
Video posted by Thompson showed uniformed rescuers working on a building that had collapsed, with crushed parked cars and trucks below. The streets of the city were strewn with broken glass and other debris from cracked buildings.
Nibhay Nand, a Sydney-based pharmacist with businesses across the South Pacific, said staff in Port Vila reported that most of the store there had been “destroyed” and other buildings nearby had “collapsed.”
“We are waiting for everyone to get online to know how devastating and traumatic this will be,” Nand said.
A tsunami warning was issued after the quake, with waves of up to 1m forecast for some areas of Vanuatu, but it was soon lifted by the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center.
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