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New quakes, tsunami panic Pacific nations

Thousands of panicked South Pacific islanders raced away from the coastline after three strong earthquakes rocked the region and generated a small tsunami yesterday, just over a week after a massive wave killed 178 people in the Samoas and Tonga.

There were no immediate reports of damage, and all tsunami warnings and watches were soon canceled. But people across the South Pacific took no chances, scrambling up hillsides and maneuvering through traffic-clogged streets to reach higher ground.

“There is panic here, too,” said Chris McKee, assistant director of the Geophysical Observatory in the Papua New Guinea capital, Port Moresby. “Offices have closed. People have rushed out onto the streets and are climbing hills. A lot of places have shut down ... We tried to put the dampeners on it, but it was already out of hand.”

The Hawaii-based Pacific Tsunami Warning Center issued a regional tsunami warning for 11 nations and territories after a quake with a magnitude of 7.8 struck 294km northwest of the Vanuatu island of Santo at a depth of 35km. Two other quakes of magnitude 7.7 and 7.3 followed in the same area.

The center canceled the tsunami warnings after sea-level readings indicated that the wave generated by the quakes was too small to cause much damage. There were no immediate reports of injury or damage from officials in Vanuatu, a chain of 83 islands. It lies about 2,200km northeast of Sydney, Australia.

“We felt the quake — it shook the ground, but not very strongly,” said a police officer in the town of Luganville on the island of Santo, the Vanuatu island nearest to the quakes’ epicenter.

The officer declined to give his name because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

Yesterday’s small tsunami came just over a week after a magnitude 8.3 quake sparked a large wave in the South Pacific that devastated coastal villages in Samoa, American Samoa and northern Tonga. The death toll from the Sept. 29 tsunami rose by five yesterday to 183, after searchers in Samoa found more bodies, said Vaosa Epa, chief executive in the office of prime minister and Cabinet. Another 32 people were killed in American Samoa and nine in Tonga.

That tragedy was fresh in the minds of residents of Tuvalu, a low-lying nation of eight coral atolls with about 10,000 people.

Thousands fled inland after yesterday’s alerts, some clustering around the government building in the capital, Funafuti — the only multi-story building in the country.

In Samoa, where at least 142 were killed in the Sept. 29 tsunami, there was a sudden rush of people heading to the hills, resident Russell Hunter said in the capital, Apia. Cars clogged the roads leading inland.

“People were genuinely afraid,” said Hunter, editor of the Samoa Observer newspaper. “They saw what happened last week and didn’t want to be part of that again.”
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