Strong quake strikes off battered Vanuatu

A magnitude 6.1 earthquake struck off the coast of Vanuatu early today, the US Geological Survey said, just days after a deadly 7.3-magnitude quake hit near the same island in the Pacific archipelago. The nation’s main island, Efate, is still reeling from the Tuesday quake, which killed 12 people as it toppled concrete buildings in the capital and set off landslides. The latest quake on Sunday occurred at a depth of 40km and was located some 30km west of the capital Port Vila.
Unlike the earlier quake, no tsunami alerts were immediately triggered by the latest temblor, which struck at 2:30am. Mobile networks remained knocked out from earlier in the week, making outside contact with Vanuatu difficult early Sunday.
In addition to disrupted communications, the first quake has damaged water supplies and resulted in halted operations at the capital’s main shipping port. The South Pacific nation declared a seven-day state of emergency and a night-time curfew following the first quake, and had only announced on Saturday it would lift a suspension on commercial flights, in an effort to restart its vital tourism industry.
Rescuers on Friday said they had expanded their search for trapped survivors to “numerous places of collapse” beyond the capital. Australia and New Zealand this week dispatched more than 100 personnel, along with rescue gear, dogs and aid supplies, to help hunt for trapped survivors and make emergency repairs. There were “several major collapse sites where buildings are fully pancaked”, Australia’s 69-strong rescue team leader Douglas May said in a video update provided by Canberra on Friday. “Outside of that, there’s a lot of smaller collapses around the place,” he said.
“We’re now starting to spread out to see whether there’s further people trapped and further damage. And we’ve found numerous places of collapse east and west out of the city.”
In Port Vila, rescuers have focused on two disaster areas from Tuesday’s earthquake: a four-storey building housing a supermarket, hotel and garage in the north in which the ground floor was flattened, and a two-floor shopping block in the city centre that crumbled into a flat pile of concrete.
More than 1,000 people were displaced as a result of the first quake - many now with other households or in evacuation centres, the latest UN report said, citing Vanuatu disaster management officials. Vanuatu, an archipelago of some 320,000 inhabitants, sits in the Pacific’s quake-prone Ring of Fire.
Tourism accounts for about a third of the country’s economy, according to the Australia-Pacific Islands Business Council.
Rescuers say they have expanded a search for survivors in quake-rocked Vanuatu to “numerous places of collapse” beyond the stricken capital. The 7.3-magnitude earthquake struck off the main island on Tuesday, toppling concrete buildings, setting off landslides, damaging water supplies and knocking out mobile networks.
It has so far claimed 10 lives in Port Vila, according to government figures relayed Thursday by the United Nations’ humanitarian affairs office. Two of the dead were Chinese and one French, their countries’ embassies have confirmed. About 80,000 people have been directly affected by the earthquake in the archipelago of 320,000 people which sits in the Pacific’s quake-prone Ring of Fire, the UN said. More than 14,000 of them are children.
There are “several major collapse sites where buildings are fully pancaked”, Australia’s 69-strong rescue team leader Douglas May said in a video update provided by Canberra on Friday. “Outside of that, there’s a lot of smaller collapses around the place,” May said. “We’re now starting to spread out to see whether there’s further people trapped and further damage. And we’ve found numerous places of collapse east and west out of the city.”
In Port Vila, rescuers have focused on two disaster areas: a four-storey building housing a supermarket, hotel and garage in the north in which the ground floor was flattened; and a two-floor shopping block in the city centre that crumbled into a flat pile of concrete.
The quake also wrecked a building housing the US, French, British, Australian and New Zealand diplomatic missions. The ground floor along half of that four-storey structure was flattened, but no deaths were reported. The government has declared a seven-day state of emergency and a night-time curfew.
“One concern now is that there are reports of 900 people displaced out of their houses and who have been sleeping outside for the last few days and nights, without proper access to water and sanitation facilities,” said Philippe Guyant, a World Health Organisation medical officer in Vanuatu. Vanuatu has usually been able to set up refuge for disasters such as cyclones, he told AFP. “But this time there was no evacuation centre, and people have stayed out for so long. There is a mix of people, some fearing to go back to...their houses destroyed in the earthquake.” Ivan Oswald, owner of the Nambawan Cafe in the city centre, was serving coffee and food to rescue workers. “Water and power is back at most places. They are testing water today, so we will know about the water quality and the power company is doing a fantastic job,” Oswald told AFP.
“Construction crews are out. People want to come into town but it is blocked off. There are still people around - once the government lets us operate again, that will be the next thing for us. It will be business as usual.”