[ad_1]
WELLINGTON (AFP) – Tsunami sirens sounded in coastal communities across the South Pacific on Friday (March 5), when a group of powerful earthquakes triggered warnings for tens of thousands of residents to rush to higher ground.
Tsunami warnings were issued in countries as distant as Peru and Australia, after a trio of large 7.4, 7.3 and 8.1 earthquakes, plus dozens of powerful aftershocks, struck near New Zealand’s remote Kermadec Islands.
No damage or injuries were reported from the earthquakes.
But authorities warned that waves of up to three meters were possible in New Caledonia and Vanuatu, where residents of the capital Port Vila received SMS messages ordering them to “move to higher ground.”
Eyewitnesses in the city said a small initial surge was visible, but did not appear to cause any damage.
In Noumea, the capital of the French territory of New Caledonia, warning sirens sounded.
The spokesman for the emergency services, Alexandre Rossignol, took to local radio to warn people to “leave the beach areas and stop all water activities and do not pick up your children from schools to avoid traffic jams” .
Several other regions were warned of minor but still potentially dangerous surges, including New Zealand, where an evacuation order for a swath of coastal communities was canceled after just a few hours.
Ms Fiona Rudsdale, who runs the Whangarei Central Holiday Park on New Zealand’s North Island, slept during the initial earthquake but was awakened by tsunami warning sirens.
He immediately began organizing the evacuation of about 30 guests from the trailer park to the top of a nearby hill.
“We took them to the top of Morningside Park, from there you can look down,” he told AFP.
“We put in some food and drink, everything went pretty well. You still have a couple of idiots in town drinking, but most of the people are being nice and doing what they are told.”
Emergency Services Minister Kiri Allan said the entire town of Opotiki, some 4,000 people, had emptied when coastal communities responded to the warnings.
“Very quickly people collected themselves, took their backpacks, got in the cars and congregated inside or on top and now they are watching it unfold,” he said.
The local coast guard ordered hundreds of boats that were still in the ocean to head to deeper waters as a precaution.
Thousands of kilometers away, on the French island of Tahiti, there were huge traffic jams as police prevented people from traveling to potentially affected areas.
Some people became slightly dehydrated during the wait, and local authorities have since lifted the tsunami warning.
The largest of the earthquakes occurred about 1,000 kilometers off the coast of New Zealand at 8.28 BC. M. (3.28 a. M. Singapore Time), said the United States Geological Survey.
It was preceded by two seismic shakes that were also enormously powerful, in an unusually strong cluster even for the Pacific Ring of Fire, where Earth’s tectonic plates collide.
“On average, an earthquake of magnitude eight or greater only occurs once a year anywhere in the world, so this is a significant earthquake with a depth and magnitude that can potentially generate a tsunami,” said Dr. Adam. Pascale, chief scientist at ESS Earth Sciences. .
New Zealand’s National Emergency Management Agency said the remoteness of the earthquakes did not minimize their potential impact.
“The earthquake may not have been felt in some of these areas, but evacuation should be immediate as a damaging tsunami is possible,” he said.
But Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern of New Zealand was one of the people who was woken up early in the morning.
“I hope everyone is well, especially on the east coast, they would have felt the full force of that earthquake,” he posted on Instagram after the initial shaking at 2.27am.
The South Pacific nation recently marked the 10th anniversary of the Christchurch earthquake, when a 6.3 earthquake killed 185 in the South Island city.
[ad_2]
