A powerful earthquake struck the Pacific island of Vanuatu on Tuesday, destroying buildings in the capital Port Vila, including one that housed the embassies of the US and other countries. A witness told Agence France-Presse about bodies seen in the city.
Dan McGarry, a journalist with the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project based in Vanuatu, told Reuters news agency in an interview that police said at least one person had been killed and injured people had been taken to hospital.
“It was the most violent earthquake I have experienced in the 21 years I lived in Vanuatu and the Pacific Islands. I have seen many large earthquakes, never an earthquake like this,” he said.
The magnitude 7.3 earthquake struck at a depth of 56 kilometers, off the coast of Efate, Vanuatu’s main island, at 12:47 a.m. local time, according to the US Geological Survey.
The ground floor of a building housing the US, French and other embassies was crushed beneath upper floors, resident Michael Thompson told AFP by satellite phone after posting images of the destruction on social media.
“That doesn’t exist anymore. It’s just completely flat. The top three floors are still holding up, but they’ve fallen,” Thompson said.
“If anyone was inside at the time, they’re gone.”
Thompson said the ground floor was home to the U.S. Embassy, but that could not immediately be confirmed.
A photo showed significant damage to the building:
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The United States has closed the embassy until further notice, citing “significant damage” to the mission, the U.S. Embassy in Papua New Guinea said in a social media post. “Our thoughts are with everyone affected by this earthquake,” the embassy said.
The New Zealand High Commission, housed in the same building, has suffered “significant damage,” said a statement from Foreign Minister Winston Peters’ office, adding that “New Zealand is deeply concerned by the significant earthquake in Vanuatu and the damage it has caused. causes.”
Thompson, who runs a zipline adventure company in Vanuatu, said: ‘There are people in the buildings in the city. There were bodies there when we walked by.”
A landslide on one road had covered a bus, he said, “so there are clearly some deaths there.”
The quake also collapsed at least two bridges and shut down most mobile networks, Thompson said.
“They are continuing with a rescue operation. The support we need from abroad is medical evacuation and expert rescue, the kind of people who can operate in earthquakes,” he said.
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Video footage posted by Thompson and verified by AFP showed uniformed rescue workers and emergency vehicles working on a building where an external roof had collapsed on a number of parked cars and trucks.
The city’s streets were littered with broken glass and other debris from damaged buildings, the footage showed.
Nibhay Nand, a Sydney-based pharmacist with businesses in the South Pacific, said he had spoken to staff in Port Vila who said most of the store there had been “destroyed” and other buildings nearby had “collapsed” were.
“We are waiting for everyone to go online to know how devastating and traumatic this will be,” Nand told AFP.
A tsunami warning was issued after the earthquake, with waves of up to one meter or more predicted for some parts of Vanuatu, but this was quickly lifted by the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center.
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 extends through Southeast Asia and across the Pacific Basin.
According to the annual World Risk Report, Vanuatu is ranked as one of the countries most prone to natural disasters such as earthquakes, storm damage, floods and tsunamis.
