Bodies seen on street as major quake shakes Vanuatu

A powerful earthquake struck the Pacific island of Vanuatu on Tuesday, severely damaging buildings in the capital Port Vila, including one housing foreign embassies. A witness told AFP about bodies lying in the street.

The magnitude 7.3 quake struck at 12:47 p.m. (0147 GMT) at a depth of 57 kilometers (35 miles), about 30 kilometers off the coast of Efate, Vanuatu’s main island, according to the US Geological Survey.

The ground floor of a building housing the US and French embassies was crushed by higher floors, resident Michael Thompson told AFP by satellite phone after posting images of the destruction on social media.

“There are people in the city’s buildings. There were bodies there when we walked by,” Thompson said.

A landslide on a road caught a bus, he said, “so there are obviously some deaths.”

The quake also caused at least two bridges to collapse, said Thompson, who runs a zipline business in Vanuatu, and the ground floor of a concrete building housing diplomatic missions was leveled.

“That doesn’t exist anymore. It’s just completely flat. The top three floors are still holding but have sunk,” he said.

“If there was anyone in there back then, they’re gone,” he said.

Most cell phone networks were cut off, Thompson said.

“They are currently proceeding with a rescue operation. The support we need from abroad is medical evacuation and qualified rescue workers, people who can respond to earthquakes,” he said.

Video footage released by Thompson and reviewed by AFP showed uniformed rescuers and emergency vehicles working on a building whose exterior roof had collapsed onto a row of parked cars and trucks.

The city’s streets were littered with broken glass and other debris from damaged buildings, footage showed.

A tsunami warning was issued after the quake, predicting waves of up to one meter (three feet) for some areas of Vanuatu, but it was soon lifted by the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center.

Waves less than 30 centimeters (one foot) above tide level were forecast for other Pacific island nations, including Fiji, Kiribati, New Caledonia, Solomon Islands and Tuvalu.

Earthquakes are common in Vanuatu, a low-lying archipelago of 320,000 people that straddles the seismic Ring of Fire, an arc of intense tectonic activity that stretches through Southeast Asia and the Pacific Basin.

According to the annual World Risk Report, Vanuatu is considered one of the countries most vulnerable to natural disasters such as earthquakes, storm damage, floods and tsunamis.

bur-pdw/cwl