Wellington, New Zealand – Injured people arrived at a hospital in Vanuatu as unconfirmed reports of injuries emerged after the South Pacific island nation was rocked by a powerful 7.3-magnitude earthquake just off the coast on Tuesday.
A tsunami warning was lifted less than two hours after the quake. With communication still disrupted hours after the shock and little official information available, witness accounts of victims emerged on social media and through patchy phone calls.
The quake struck at a depth of 35 miles and was centered 18 miles west of Port Vila, the largest city in Vanuatu, a group of 80 islands that is home to about 330,000 people. The tremor was followed by a magnitude 5.5 aftershock near the same location.
It was not immediately clear how much damage was caused, as phone lines and government websites remained down and official channels were not updated, but reports of widespread destruction filtered through on social media and in interviews.
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Dan McGarry, a Port Vila-based journalist, told The Associated Press that he heard about a fatality in the quake from a police officer outside Vila Central Hospital. McGarry saw three people on stretchers “in obvious distress,” he said.
Doctors were working “as quickly as they could” in a triage center outside the emergency room, he added. But the nation is not prepared for a mass casualty event, McGarry said.
Videos shared by the Vanuatu Broadcasting and Television Corporation showed crowds outside the hospital. Telephone numbers of the police, hospital and other public bodies could not be connected. There were no official reports of casualties.
Reports of people trapped in buildings could also not be confirmed.
A video posted on social media appeared to show crumpled buildings in Port Vila, including one that had collapsed onto cars. A spokesman for the Red Cross in Fiji said the head of the charity’s Vanuatu office reported widespread damage before communications were lost.
A four-story building that housed several embassies in Port Vila – including those of the United States, Britain, France and New Zealand – sustained significant damage, New Zealand’s Foreign Ministry said.
A video posted on social media showed the building had some damage, including dented windows and debris that had fallen from the walls to the floor. Other photos and videos showed items and shelves falling to store floors and landslides that appeared to block some streets.
Agence France-Presse said its photos showed the ground floor of the building was completely flattened.
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The ground floor “no longer exists,” Vanuatu’s Michael Thompson told AFP by satellite phone after posting images of the destruction on social media. “It’s just completely flat. The top three floors are still holding but have sunk.”
But AFP reports that the US Embassy in Papua New Guinea said all staff at the US Embassy in Vanuatu were “safe and held accountable”.
“While the U.S. Embassy building sustained significant damage, all personnel were able to safely evacuate the building,” it said in a statement on social media, adding that the embassy would remain closed until further notice.
Katie Greenwood, the Fiji-based head of the Red Cross’s Asia-Pacific regional office, told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. that downtown Port Vila was full of large buildings and hotels.
“At the moment we have not heard from any victims, but I would be shocked if we don’t hear the bad news from Port Vila at some point,” she said.
McGarry said a “massive landslide” at the international shipping terminal would likely hinder the country’s recovery. The airport’s runway was also damaged, he said.
Because of Vanuatu’s location in a subduction zone – where the Indo-Australian tectonic plate moves beneath the Pacific plate – earthquakes of magnitude greater than 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 “by far” the worst thing he had experienced in his 21 years in Vanuatu, he said.
In the hours after the earthquake, the USGS said the threat of a tsunami had passed. The agency had previously warned of waves up to 3 feet above tide level.
Authorities in Australia and New Zealand, both located in the Pacific Ocean, said there was no tsunami threat to their countries.
