PORT MORESBY — A 7.6-magnitude earthquake
shook
Papua New Guinea Sunday, damaging buildings, triggering landslides, and
killing at least five people, with several others severely injured.
اضافة اعلان
Residents in northern towns near the epicenter
reported intense shaking mid-morning that cracked roads and rattled the
cladding off buildings.
Local MP Kessy Sawang said at least two people had
died in remote mountain villages, with four others airlifted to hospital in
critical condition.
“There has been widespread damage,” she told AFP,
adding that a landslide had buried homes and “split” one village where people
had “lost their houses”.
In nearby Wau, Koranga Alluvial Mining said three
miners had been buried alive.
There are limited communications in the area, few
government resources and very few paved roads, making assessment and rescue
efforts difficult.
Small aviation companies and missionary groups were
involved in airlifting some of the injured across the rugged jungle landscape.
“It’s very difficult, the terrain, the weather. It’s
challenging,” said Nellie Pumai of Manolos Aviation, which had transported one
person out and was trying to return.
In the eastern highland town of Goroka, residents
captured images of window awnings falling off the cracked walls of a local
university.
It was “very strong”, said Hivi Apokore, a worker at
the Jais Aben Resort near the coastal town of Madang.
“Everything was like sitting on a sea — just
floating.”
The quake was felt as far as the capital Port
Moresby about 480km away.
The
US Geological Survey initially issued a tsunami
warning for nearby coastal areas, but subsequently said the threat had passed.
But fearful locals near the sea nevertheless fled
for higher ground — reporting that the water level had suddenly dropped.
‘Massive’
The nation’s leader, James
Marape, said the quake was “massive” and told people to be cautious, but said
he expected the damage to be less than that from a 2018 quake and series of aftershocks,
which killed an estimated 150 people.
However, the scale of the damage and number of
casualties from Sunday’s quake was still unclear.
“National and provincial disaster agencies, as well
as leaders, have been asked to assess the damage and injuries to people and
attend to these as soon as possible,” Marape said.
State-backed communications firm DataCo said it was
experiencing “multiple service disruptions” to the operation of a domestic
undersea communications cable as well as the PIPE Pacific Cable 1 that runs
from Sydney to Guam.
It was not yet clear if there was any damage to
regional airports.
The quake struck at a depth of 61km, about 67km from
the town of Kainantu, according to the US Geological Survey.
Papua New Guinea sits on the Pacific “Ring of Fire”,
causing it to experience frequent earthquakes.
Earlier Sunday, the US Geological Survey also
reported two strong quakes in the remote Mentawai Islands off the western coast
of Sumatra in neighboring Indonesia.
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