A 7.6-magnitude earthquake rocked Papua New Guinea within the southwestern Pacific on Sunday morning, the U.S. Geological Survey mentioned.
The quake occurred round 9:46 a.m. Sunday. Its epicenter was about 41 miles east of Kainantu, within the Papua New Guinea highlands, based on the USGS.
The total extent of the injury, in addition to whether or not there have been any casualties, was not instantly clear.
Jana Pursley, a geophysicist with the USGS, mentioned injury might be reasonable to heavy, however no main inhabitants facilities seemed to be within the path of the temblor’s deadliest waves.
“This might positively be a harmful earthquake,” Pursley mentioned.
Regardless of liquefaction, the place water-logged land loses foundational power, and different instability, equivalent to doable landslides, the USGS mentioned it was doubtless {that a} comparatively restricted inhabitants was uncovered to the worst of the earthquake.
Renagi Ravu was assembly with two colleagues at his house in Kainantu on Sunday morning when the earthquake struck.
Ravu, who’s a geologist, mentioned he tried to calm everyone because the shaking continued for greater than a minute, sending plates and cups crashing to the bottom.
“It’s a standard factor that earthquakes are felt right here, but it surely normally doesn’t final as lengthy and isn’t as violent as this one,” Ravu mentioned. “It was fairly intense.”
About 10,000 folks dwell in and round his city and there are various scattered settlements within the highlands, he mentioned.
Buddies in Kainantu messaged him descriptions of cracked roads, damaged pipes and fallen particles, Ravu mentioned.
Farther east, images of a multistory construction on the College of Goroka within the city of the identical identify confirmed it broken, fragile and showing to teeter.
Papua New Guinea experiences a excessive fee of seismic exercise, based on the USGS, which has famous 78 earthquakes of magnitude 6 or larger within the space of the quake within the final 50 years.
The earthquake occurred on account of regular faulting about 56 miles beneath an space of the nation close to the northern fringe of the Australia plate, the USGS mentioned.
The federal Pacific Tsunami Warning Heart in Hawaii mentioned the earthquake finally introduced no risk of tidal waves to United States coastlines and Pacific territories.
Michelle Acevedo, Cristian Santana and The Related Press contributed.
Tim Winton
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