Three dead as quake hits Papua New Guinea
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By Nick Perry in Wellington
At least three people are dead after a powerful earthquake hit a remote part of Papua New Guinea, authorities say.
Others were injured and infrastructure damaged in the magnitude 7.6 jolt that was felt across the Pacific country.
The three people died in a landslide in the gold-mining town of Wau, said Morobe Provincial Disaster Director Charley Masange.
Other people had been injured from falling structures or debris, and there was damage to some health centres, homes, rural roads and highways, Masange said.
Masange said it could take some time to assess the full extent of the injuries and damage in the region. But he said the sparse and scattered population and lack of large buildings near the epicentre in the nation’s largely undeveloped highlands may have helped prevent a bigger disaster, given the earthquake was so strong.
A magnitude 7.5 earthquake in 2018 in the nation’s central region killed at least 125 people. That quake hit areas that are remote and undeveloped, and assessments about the scale of the damage and injuries were slow to filter out.
Felix Taranu, a seismologist at the Geophysical Observatory in the capital Port Moresby, said it was too early to know the full impacts of Sunday’s earthquake, although its strength meant it “most likely caused considerable damage.”
According to the US Geological Survey, the quake hit at 9:46am local time at a depth of 90 kilometres. NOAA advised there was no tsunami threat for the region.
Residents took to social media sharing images and videos of cracked roads, damaged buildings and cars, and items falling off supermarket shelves.
In nearby western Indonesia, about 200 people evacuated to higher ground after n magnitude 6.1 quake struck some islands, causing some property damage.
The quake in the Mentawai Islands west of Sumatra struck at a depth of 27 km on Sunday and was followed by one of magnitude 5.3 in the same area, the country’s disaster mitigation agency BNPB said. There was no danger of tsunami.
Papua New Guinea and Indonesia sit on the Pacific’s Ring of Fire, the arc of seismic faults around the Pacific Ocean where much of the world’s earthquakes and volcanic activity occurs.
AAP
