A powerful 7.3 earthquake struck off the Pacific island nation of Vanuatu yesterday, triggering a small tsunami exactly six years after giant waves killed 220,000 people around the Indian Ocean.
The Hawaii-based Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said the shallow quake generated a tsunami, but it canceled a regional warning after the wave measured only 15cm higher than normal in Vanuatu.
“Sea level readings confirm that a tsunami was generated,” the center said in its bulletin.
“This tsunami may have been destructive along coastlines of the region near the earthquake epicenter,” it said, but canceled the warning when no destructive wave hit.
The quake struck at 12:16am yesterday, and the initial tsunami warning covered Vanuatu, Fiji and the French Pacific territory of New Caledonia. There were no reports of damage or casualties.
Jackie Philip, a member of staff at the Melanesian Port Vila Hotel in the Vanuatu capital, said the hotel was busy with late-night Christmas revelers when the quake struck.
“Some of us, we ran outside and stood and watched the sea for a few minutes, but nothing happened. There is no damage and no injuries,” he said, adding that no tsunami warning had been given on local radio.
A receptionist at Port Vila’s Grand Hotel called it a “small” earthquake, adding that calls to the meteorological office went unanswered.
Staff at the nearby Island Magic Hotel also said there had been no local tsunami warning.
“We haven’t had any notification of a tsunami,” a worker said. “We definitely felt the earthquake, but we are notified if there’s actually a tsunami.”
Meteorological and disaster management officials were not available for comment when contacted
The US Geological Survey (USGS) said the quake was just 12.3km deep and its epicenter was 145km west of Isangel, on the island of Tanna — home to an active volcano — in the Vanuatu archipelago.
The USGS revised its initial readings for the magnitude and distances involved, after first recording the quake at 7.6.
At least a dozen aftershocks of 5.0 or greater hit the area after the main tremor, according to USGS, including a powerful 6.2 shock about 12 hours after the initial quake.
Vanuatu, which lies between Fiji and Australia and north of New Zealand and has a population of 220,000 scattered across several islands, is part of the Pacific’s “Ring of Fire” — an ocean-wide area alive with seismic and volcanic activity caused by the grinding of enormous tectonic plates.
Sunday’s quake came on the sixth anniversary of one of the worst natural disasters of modern times, when a huge tsunami triggered by an undersea quake off Indonesia killed more than 220,000 people around the Indian Ocean.
After the disaster, which came with little or no warning for millions of coastal residents, regional governments deployed a string of monitoring buoys in the Indian and Pacific Oceans to keep track of any abnormal waves.
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