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Tuesday, January 10, 2023
An earthquake with the likely magnitude of 7.0 struck the Oceanian nation of Vanuatu at 11:30 PM VUT Saturday (10:30 UTC Sunday). There were no reports of casualties.
In an interview with Agence France-Presse (AFP), Kayson Pore, a 22-year-old college student on Espiritu Santo, Vanuatu’s largest island, said, “We were right on the sea, we were looking for crab on the coast,” when he experienced a “very huge” quake. “We ran for our lives and then we ran to our homes…[p]eople were moving to higher ground” to avoid a tsunami.
Pore said the quake knocked over and shattered cups in his kitchen, but he did not see any serious damage in his town of 1,000, Hog Harbour. Voice of America, however, reported locals experienced “damage”.
The United States Geological Survey (USGS) issued a tsunami warning after the quake, stating “[t]sunami waves reaching 0.3 to one meter above the tide level are possible for some coasts of Vanuatu”; USGS also warned of waves of up to 0.3 meters above the tide level in New Caledonia and the Solomon Islands. The French Embassy in Vanuatu thus warned people to stay away from the shore.
The New Zealand National Emergency Management Agency said they did not expect any tsunamis to affect their coast.
No tsunamis occurred, and USGS declared hours later that the region was safe.
The archipelago of Vanuatu lies along the fault line of the Oceanian and Pacific plates, part of the Ring of Fire, and thus frequently experiences seismic and volcanic activity. In November, a magnitude 7.0 earthquake shook the Solomon Islands but did not cause serious casualties or destruction. However, 4,300 people died or went missing in a magnitude 7.5 earthquake on the island of Sulawesi, Indonesia, in 2018.
The yearly World Risk Report rated Vanuatu as one of the countries most susceptible to natural disasters.