Pacific countries have emerged relatively unscathed from a restless night punctuated by tsunami warning sirens.

The tsunami waves, caused by a massive 8.8-magnitude earthquake off the coast of Russia, have now rolled on southeastward toward South America.

According to the US Geological Survey, there have been around 80 aftershocks of magnitude 5 or higher around the area, and there is a 59 percent chance of a magnitude 7 or higher shock within the next week.

• READ MORE: Tsunami alerts lifted in several nations after waves hit Russia, US, Japan

“It is most likely that 0 to 5 of these will occur,” it stated.

The Guardian reported that a 6.4-magnitude quake struck around 320 km southwest of the epicenter yesterday about 11am local time (ET).

As such, while there are no longer any formal warnings or advisory notices in the Pacific, the threat of tsunami waves remains.

Metservice said that waves as high as 3 metres were still possible along some coasts of the northwestern Hawai’ian islands.

Waves between 1 and 3 metres tall were possible along the rest of Hawai’i, as well as as French Polynesia, Kiribati, Samoa and the Solomon Islands.

Assessing the damage
In Fiji, an advisory was put in place until 10:15pm local time, though the National Disaster Risk Management Office (NDMO) reminded citizens to remain alert and continue to follow official updates.

The office said people should take this as an opportunity to update their family emergency plans and evacuation routes.

The NDMO also called on citizens to refrain from spreading false or unverified information in the wake of the cancellation.

Advisory notices were cancelled in the early hours of the morning across Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, French Polynesia and the American Territories. Samoa was the last to rescind theirs, at around 4am local time.

No damage or major incidents have been reported.

In the Cook Islands, the Meteorological Service warned residents to anchor their boats and tie down their washing lines.

“A big boss high-pressure system chilling way down southwest is flexing hard — sending savage southerly swells and grumpy southeast winds across the group like it owns the reef,” it said.

“A sassy low-pressure trough is making a dramatic entrance tomorrow, rolling in with clouds, showers, and random thunderclaps like it’s auditioning for a Cook Islands soap opera.”

Evacuation order
In Hawai’i, an evacuation was ordered after 12pm local time along the coast of Oahu, including in parts of Honolulu, before waves began to arrive after 7pm.

As local media reported, intense traffic jams formed across Oahu as authorities evacuated people in coastal communities, and a sense of panic stirred.

Lauren Vinnel, an emergency management specialist at Massey University, told RNZ Pacific that the ideal scenario would have been for people to leave on foot.

“We know that this is where public education and practising tsunami evacuation is really important,” she said.

“We know that if people have identified their evacuation route and have practised it, it’s much easier for them to calmly and safely evacuate when a real event does occur.”

The advisory notice was lifted across Hawai’i at 8:58am local time.

Tonga’s tsunami trauma
Meanwhile, tsunami sirens sounded on and off overnight in Tonga until authorities cancelled the warning for the kingdom at around midnight local time.

Siaosi Sovaleni, Prime Minister of Tonga, during the 2022 volcano eruption and subsequent tsunami, said he was pleased the country’s emergency alert systems were working.

“The population is better informed this time around than the last time. I think it was much more scary [in 2022] . . . nobody knew what’s happening. The communication was down.”

‘We have to be prepared’
Vinnel said that she was satisfied overall with how Aotearoa responded.

“Obviously, it’s not ideal that initially we didn’t think there was a tsunami threat based on the initial assessment of the magnitude of the earthquake. But these things do happen. I’m not sure that there was anything that could have been done differently.”

John Townend, a geophysics professor at Victoria University of Wellington, told RNZ Pacific that these happen frequently around the world,”but one of this size doesn’t really happen more often than about once every decade.”

The last time an earthquake surpassed the magnitude 8 level was the 2011 Tōhoku disaster in Japan, which clocked out at 9.1.

But Townend said that the characteristics of the “subduction zone earthquake,” were largely in line with expectations for it’s kind, a “subduction zone earthquake”.

“They have happened repeatedly in the past along this portion of the Kamchatka Peninsula . . .  these things happen in this part of the world.

“In a New Zealand context, this earthquake was about one magnitude unit bigger than the Kaikoura earthquake and it released about 30 times more energy.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

For Doddy Morris, a journalist with the Vanuatu Daily Post, the 7.3 magnitude earthquake that struck Vanuatu last month on December 17, 2024, was more than just a story — it was a personal tragedy.

Amid the chaos, Morris learned his brother, an Anglican priest, had died.

“My mom called me crying and asked, ‘Did your brother die?’. I wasn’t sure and told her I was heading to Vila Central Hospital right away,” he recalled.

• READ MORE: Vanuatu election 2025: Earthquake aftershocks expose high cost of democracy
• Other Vanuatu earthquake reports

Morris arrived at the hospital to confirm the worst. “My heart sank when I confirmed that my brother had indeed passed away. At that moment, I forgot about my job.”

Despite his grief, Morris joined his remaining brothers at the hospital mortuary that night, staying by their deceased sibling’s side and mourning together. “We were the only ones there. We spent the whole night drinking kava outside while he lay in the cool room,” he said.

The quake — which claimed 14 lives, injured more than 265 people, and displaced more than 1000 — left an indelible mark on Port Vila and its residents. Infrastructure damage was extensive, with schools, homes, and water reserves destroyed, and the Central Business District (CBD) heavily impacted.

In the days following the earthquake, Morris returned to his role as a reporter, capturing the unfolding crisis despite the emotional toll. “When the earthquake struck, I thought I was going to die myself,” he said. Yet, minutes after the tremor subsided, he grabbed his camera and rushed to the CBD.

At the heart of the destruction, he witnessed harrowing scenes. “I was shocked to see the collapsed Billabong building. A body lay covered with a blue tarpaulin, and Pro Rescue teams were trying to save others who were trapped inside,” Morris recounted.

The lack of a network connection frustrated his efforts to report live, but he pressed on, documenting the damage.

A month after the disaster, Morris continues to cover the aftermath as Vanuatu transitions from emergency response to recovery. “A month has passed since the earthquake, but the memories remain fresh. We don’t know when Port Vila will return to normal,” he said.

His photojournalism has been demonstrating the true impact of the earthquake as he continues to capture the mourning of a nation after such a tragic event.

The earthquake left deep scars, not only on the nation’s infrastructure but also on its people. “Unlike cyclones, which we can predict, prepare for, and survive, earthquakes strike without warning and show no mercy,” Morris said.

Through grief and uncertainty, Morris remains committed to his work, documenting the resilience of his community and the challenges they face as they rebuild. His reporting serves as a testament to the strength of both the people of Vanuatu and a journalist who continues to bear witness, even in the face of personal loss.

Reporting on his own community while grappling with personal loss is a reality for many Pacific Island journalists who cover disasters. For Doddy Morris, reporting on the traumatic events of the earthquake meant confronting his own grief while documenting the grief of others.

Dr Lagipoiva Cherelle Jackson is a Pacific journalism trainer with the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma. She expresses her support for Morris and his colleagues in showing “extraordinary courage and resilience”. This article was first published by The New Atoll and is republished with permission.

Today marks one month since a 7.3-magnitude earthquake struck Vanuatu’s capital, Port Vila, claiming 14 lives, injuring more than 200 people, and displacing thousands more.

Downtown Port Vila remains a no-go zone.

Star Wharf, the international port, is still out of action and parts of the city and some of the villages surrounding it still have not had their water supply reconnected.

• READ MORE: Vanuatu polling underway in snap election one month after quake
• Vanuatu election: Preparation almost complete for snap ballot
• Other Vanuatu election reports

The Recovery Operations Centre estimates around 6000 workers from 200 businesses that operate in the CBD have been impacted.

All the while, loud rumbling tremors continue to rock the city; a recent one measuring above magnitude 5 on the Richter scale.

Leinasei Tarisiu lives outside of Vila but came in to vote in the snap election yesterday. She said children in her household still panic when there is an earthquake, even if it is small.

“They are still afraid. Even last night when we had that one that happened, we all ran outside,” she said.

“It’s hard for us to remain in the house.”

Ongoing trauma
The only mental health specialist at Vila Central Hospital, Dr Jimmy Obed, said the ongoing seismic activity is re-traumatising many.

Obed said as things slowly returned to something resembling normalcy, more people were reaching out for mental health support.

“What we try and tell them is that it’s a normal thing for you to be having this anxiety,” he said.

“And then we give them some skills. How to calm themselves down . . . when they are panicking, or are under stress, or have difficulty sleeping.

“Simple skills that they can use — even how children can calm and regulate their emotions.”

Trenold Tari, an aviation worker who spoke to RNZ Pacific after he had cast his vote, said he hopes they are able to elect leaders with good ideas for Vanuatu’s future.

“And not just the vision to run the government and the nation but also who has leadership qualities and is transparent. People who can work with communities and who don’t just think about themselves,” he said.

Wanting quick rebuild
Many voters in the capital said they wanted leaders who would act quickly to rebuild the quake-stricken city.

Others said they were sick of political instability.

This week’s snap election was triggered by a premature dissolution of parliament last year; the second consecutive time President Nike Vurobaravu has acted on a council of ministers’ request to dissolve the house in the face of a leadership challenge.

Counting this week’s election, Vanuatu will have had five prime ministers in the last four years.

The chairperson of the Seaside Tongoa community, Paul Fred Tariliu, said they have discussed this as a group and made their feelings clear to their election candidate.

“We told our candidate to tell the presidents of all the political parties they are affiliated with — that if they end up in government and they find at some point they don’t have the number and a motion is brought against you, please be honest and set a good example — tell one group to step down and let another government come in,” Tariliu said.

Desperate need of aid
Election fever aside, thousands of people in Port Vila are still in desperate need of assistance.

The head of the Vanuatu Red Cross Society is looking to start distributing financial relief assistance to families affected by last month’s earthquake.

The society’s secretary-general, Dickinson Tevi, said some villages were still without water and a lot of people were out of work.

“We have realised that there are still a few requests coming from the communities. People who haven’t been assessed during the emergency,” Tevi said.

“So, we have made plans to do a more detailed assessment after this to make sure we don’t leave anyone out.”

Tevi said with schools due to restart soon, parents and families who had lost their main source of income were under a lot of stress.

In a release, Save the Children Vanuatu country director Polly Bank, said disasters often had the power to suddenly turn children’s lives upside down, especially if they had lost loved ones, had their education interrupted, or had been forced to flee their homes.

Critical for children’s recovery
“In the aftermath of any disaster, it is critical for children recovering that they are able to return to their normal routines as soon as possible,” she said.

“And for most kids, this would include returning to school, where they can reconnect with friends and share their experiences.”

She said at least 12,500 children in the country may be forced to start the new school year in temporary learning centres with at least 100 classrooms across the country damaged or destroyed.

It is back to business for Vanuatu today after the public holiday that was declared yesterday to allow people to go and vote.

Unofficial election results continue to trickle in with local media reporting an even distribution of seats across the country for the Leaders Party, Vanua’aku Party, Reunification Movement for Change and the Iauko Group.

But it is still early days, with official results a while away.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

The electoral commission in Vanuatu is trying its best to clear up some confusion with the voting process for tomorrow’s snap election.

Principal Electoral Officer Guilain Malessas said this is due to the tight turnaround to deliver this election after Parliament was dissolved last year.

The Vanuatu Electoral Office has confirmed that 52 seats, across 18 constituencies, will be contested by 217 candidates, seven of whom are women.

• READ MORE: Other Vanuatu election reports

But Malessas said against all odds, preparations were almost complete.

The final ballot boxes are being deployed to the farthest polling stations in the country and final checks are being carried out.

He said the premature dissolution of parliament last year forced them to have to deliver an election a year early, and within a two-month timeframe, as required in the constitution.

“The final challenge that remains is for us to make sure all the ballot boxes that we have deployed have reached all the polling stations safely,” he said.

“Also, there is the challenge of a new ballot structure which we have not had enough awareness on.”

He said they had not had enough time to conduct community awareness about the new system, and there was also new electoral legislation, which was passed in preparation for 2026 — the original date for the next election.

“With the new ballot structure you just have a single page with all the candidates and their symbols on it and you just have to tick the one you want,” Malessas said.

“We have not had enough awareness.

“We have used all existing social media platforms but lots of people in rural areas do not have access to these things.”

Extra training
Malessas said they had had extra training for polling station officials to help voters on Thursday, and had printed lots of informational material to be posted up at polling stations.

He said election candidates had also been conducting awareness during their political campaigns.

With the December 17 earthquake forcing the relocation of many polling stations, they were also anticipating people turning up with national ID cards at the wrong polling stations.

To manage this, they plan to verify that the person is a resident of the constituency and that their ID card was issued before the close of voter registrations for this election on 3 December 2024.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Out of the rubble of last year’s 7.3 magnitude earthquake that hit Vanuatu’s capital Port Vila on December 17 and the snap election due next week on January 16, a new leadership is required to reset the country’s developmental trajectory.

Persistent political turmoil has hampered the Pacific nation’s ability to deal with a compounding set of social and economic shocks over recent years, caused by climate-related and other natural disasters.

The earthquake is estimated to have conservatively caused US$244 million (VUV29 billion) in damage, and the Vanuatu government’s ability to pay for disaster response, the election, and resume public service delivery will require strong, committed and stable leadership.

• READ MORE: Pacific 2025: Vanuatu quake, Tongan and Kanaky shakeups, Trump questions set tone for coming year
• Other Vanuatu snap election reports

Prior to the devastating quake and dramatic dissolution of Parliament on November 18, economist Peter Judge from Vanuatu-based Pacific Consulting warned of an evolving economic emergency.

Vanuatu’s US$1 billion economy faced a concerning decline in government revenue from value-added tax, down 25 percent on the previous year.

This was a ripple effect from the decline in economic activity after the collapse of national airline Air Vanuatu last May, as well as the falling revenues from the troubled Citizenship by Investment Programme.

Both were plagued by lack of oversight by parliamentarians.

Struggling economy
In 2024, Vanuatu is expected to record about 1 percent economic growth, as it struggles to climb out of the red and back to pre-pandemic levels.

Conversely, Vanuatu has a much more positive, although somewhat contradictory democratic profile.

According to the Global State of Democracy Initiative, Vanuatu is one of the more democratic states in the Pacific islands region, and currently ranks as 45th in the world.

But this performance comes with a significant price. Leadership turnover is frequent, with 28 prime ministerial terms in just 44 years of statehood, 20 of those in the last 25 years — the highest frequency of change in the Melanesian region.

The impacts of disrupted leadership and political instability are highly visible. Government decision-making and service delivery is grindingly slow.

In Vanuatu’s Parliament, the legislative process is frequently deferred due to regular motions of no confidence, with several critical bills still awaiting MPs’ attention.

Last October, for example, the Vanuatu government proposed a 2025 budget 10 percent smaller than 2024’s, due to reduced economic activity and declining government revenue.

Sudden dissolution
Parliament was unable to approve this year’s budget due to its sudden dissolution on November 18, only two-and-a-half years into a four-year political term.

This is the second consecutive presidential dissolution of Parliament, the previous one in 2022 also occurring barely two-and-a-half years into its term.

The Bill for the appropriation of the 2025 budget now awaits the formation of the next legislature for approval. In the meantime, earthquake recovery and election management costs accumulate under a caretaker government.

With deepening economic hardship and industries facing slow economic growth across multiple sectors, voters are looking for leadership that can stabilise the compounding cost of living pressures.

The new government will need to urgently tackle overdue, unresolved issues pertaining to reliable inter-island transport and air connectivity, outstanding teacher salaries and greater opportunities for the nation’s restive youth.

The youth unemployment rate is at 10.7 percent and rising.

Democracy with political stability is the holy grail for Vanuatu. But attaining this legendary and supposedly miraculous prize comes with costs attached.

Rules come into force
In response to civic and youth activism in late 2023 calling for political stability and transparency, the last Parliament approved a national referendum to make political affiliation more accountable and end party hopping.The rules come into force in the next parliamentary term for the first time.

The referendum passed successfully on May 29, 2024, but cost US$2.9 million. The 2022 snap election required US$1.4 million and the 2025 poll is expected to require another US$1.6 million.

While revenue from candidature fees of US$250,000 does cover part of these costs, each legislature transition also weighs on the public purse.

The current crop of outgoing 52 parliamentarians were paid out US$1.62 million in gratuities and benefits — around US$31,000 per MP — even though most did not see out their full terms.

Vanuatu’s average annual household income in 2020 was US$9000.

Whatever the outcome of the 2025 snap election, the incoming government will need to refocus attention on stabilising the trajectory of Vanuatu’s economy and development.

The next legislature — the 14th — will need to commit to stability in the interests of Vanuatu’s people and the nation’s development.

Budget, earthquake recovery priorities
The most immediate priorities for a new government should be the passage of the 2025 national budget and the implementation of an earthquake recovery and reconstruction plan.

In the 45 years since throwing off the British and French colonial yoke, citizens have enthusiastically done their duty at elections in the expectation of a national leadership that will take Vanuatu forward.

Now their faith appears to be waning, after the 2022 poll saw voter turnout — a key indicator of the health of a democracy — dropped below 50 percent for the first time since independence.

This election therefore needs to see a return on the considerable investment made in Vanuatu’s democratic processes, both in terms of financial cost to successive governments and donors, and more to the point, a political dividend for voters.

Anna Naupa is a ni-Vanuatu scholar and currently a PhD student at the Australian National University. Republished from BenarNews with permission.

New Zealand’s Urban Search and Rescue (USAR) says impending bad weather for Port Vila is now the most significant post-quake hazard.

A tropical low in the Coral Sea is expected to move into Vanuatu waters, bringing heavy rainfall.

Authorities have issued warnings to people living near landslide-prone areas around the Vanuatu capital.

• READ MORE: Quake-shocked New Caledonian children repatriated from Vanuatu
• Vanuatu snap election pushed back after earthquake
• Vanuatu earthquake: Last repatriation from Port Vila, water in short supply
• Other Vanuatu earthquake reports

People living near low lying areas or rivers have also been told to move, should water levels rise.

The heavy rain may also cause flash flooding.

USAR team leader Ken Cooper said last Tuesday’s 7.3 earthquake caused significant landslides.

“With the weather system that’s coming in, there is a high likelihood that the landslides continue and we need to ensure that there’s no life risks if those landslides should move further,” Cooper said.

Death toll now 12
Aftershocks have continued, and early this morning, the US Geological Survey recorded a magnitude 6.1 quake, at a depth of 40km west of Port Vila.

New Zealand and Vanuatu engineers were assessing prioritised areas in the capital, and a decision would then be made as to whether a community needed to be evacuated, Cooper said.

Since the team had been in Vanuatu, it had taken damage assessments of buildings and infrastructure, with the Vanuatu government, allowing them to prioritise the biggest risks and to assist the community in recovering more quickly, he said.

The official death toll from Vanuatu’s 7.3 magnitude quake is now 12 according to the Vanuatu Disaster Management office.

This has been confirmed by the Vila Central Hospital.

Earlier unofficial reports had placed the death toll at 16.

The team had completed almost 1000 assessments, alongside the Australia USAR team, which was a significant task, Cooper said.

Both teams shared common tools and practices, which had allowed them to work simultaneously and helped the teams to quickly carry out the assessments, he said.

“When we undertake the assessments that really gives us a clear picture of what should be prioritised and we work with the [Vanuatu] government and their infrastructure cluster, and some of the priorities we have looked at are bridges, [the] airport, the port, and also landslides,” he said.

Resilience shown by locals
The deployment lead for New Zealand in Vanuatu praised the resilience of the Ni-Vanuatu people following the 7.3 earthquake.

Thousands of people had been affected by the disaster but the response effort was being hampered by damage to core infrastructure including the country’s telecommunications network.

Emma Dunlop-Bennett said the New Zealand teams on the ground were working in partnership with the Vanuatu government.

She said she was in awe of the strength of locals after the disaster.

“As we go out into communities, working . . .  with the government, people are out there, getting up and doing what they can to get themselves into business as usual, life as usual. I am really in awe and humbled.

The purpose of the New Zealand team being in Vanuatu was three-fold: To provide urgent and critical humanitarian assistance, a response for consular need to New Zealanders, and to support a smooth transition from relief, response to recovery, Dunlop-Bennett said.

Then to business as usual, working along side the priority need identified by the Vanuatu government, she added.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Twenty New Caledonian children who suffered the shock of Port Vila’s 7.3 magnitude earthquake have been repatriated from Vanuatu on board a French military CASA aircraft.

The special operation was conducted on Thursday, as part of relief operations conducted by the Nouméa-based French Armed Forces in New Caledonia in response to the destructive quake that shook the Vanuatu capital, where several buildings have collapsed.

The group of children, from northern New Caledonia (Népoui, Koné, Pouembout, and Poia), are aged between 8 and 14.

• READ MORE: Vanuatu snap election pushed back after earthquake
• Vanuatu earthquake: Last repatriation from Port Vila, water in short supply
• Other Vanuatu earthquake reports

They were visiting Vanuatu as part of a holiday camp organised by their sports association.

They were supervised by four adults.

One of them, Melissa Rangassamy, told local Radio Rythme Bleu upon arrival in Nouméa that the group was having a picnic on a Port Vila beach when the ground started to shake violently.

“Children were falling to the ground, everyone was falling all around, it was panic. We told the children not to move. At the time, they were in shock.

“We gathered them all, put them on the buses, and went straight up to a higher place,” she said.

“It’s so good to come back home.”

More evacuation flights
The French High Commission in New Caledonia said a special psychological assistance unit was available to anyone who should need help.

More flights to evacuate French nationals would be carried out of Port Vila to New Caledonia, French Ambassador to Vanuatu Jean-Baptiste Jeangène Vilmer said.

Vanuatu hosts a significant French community, estimated at more than 3300 French citizens, including from New Caledonia.

New Caledonia is also home to a strong ni-Vanuatu community of about 5000.

One French national confirmed among fatalities
A Vanuatu-born French citizen has been confirmed dead.

He was found under the rubble of one of the hardest-hit buildings in central Port Vila.

He has been identified as Vincent Goiset, who belongs to a long-established, affluent Vanuatu family of Vietnamese origin.

The total death toll from the December 17 earthquake stood at 15 on Friday, but was still likely to rise.

France, Australia and New Zealand: 100 percent ‘FRANZ’
Both Australia and New Zealand, through their armed forces, have deployed relief — including urban search and rescue teams — in a bid to find survivors under the collapsed buildings.

The two countries are part of a tripartite set-up called “FRANZ” (France, Australia, New Zealand).

Signed in 1992, the agreement enforces a policy of systematic coordination between the three armed forces when they operate to bring assistance to Pacific island countries affected by a natural disaster.

As part of the FRANZ set-up, the French contribution included an initial reconnaissance flight from its Nouméa-based Falcon-200 jet (known as the Gardian) at daybreak on Wednesday, mostly to assess the Bauerfield airport.

Port Vila is only 500km away from Nouméa.

Later that day, a French PUMA helicopter transported emergency relief and personnel (including experts in buildings structural assessment, telecom and essential supplies such as water and electricity) to Port Vila to further assess the situation.

The small military CASA aircraft also operated a number of rotations between Nouméa and Port Vila, bringing more relief supplies (including food rations, water, and IT equipment) and returning with evacuees.

The French High Commission also said if needed, a Nouméa-based surveillance frigate Vendémiaire and the overseas assistance vessel d’Entrecasteaux were placed on stand-by mode “ready to set sail from Nouméa to Vanuatu within 72 and 96 hours, respectively”.

Embassies ‘flattened’
Following the Tuesday quake, four embassies in Port Vila (New Zealand, United Kingdom, the United States and France), all under the same roof, had been temporarily relocated to their respective chiefs of mission.

Their offices, once located in a three-storey building, collapsed and were “flattened”, the French ambassador said.

Vanuatu’s caretaker Prime Minister Charlot Salwaï has announced a state of emergency at least until Christmas and the Vanuatu snap election has been postponed from January 14 to 16.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

A number of Kiwis have been successfully evacuated from Vanuatu after a devastating earthquake shook the Pacific island nation earlier this week.

The death toll was still unclear, though at least 14 people were killed according to an earlier statement from the Vanuatu government.

The 7.3 magnitude quake struck on Tuesday, and more than 200 people were injured.

• READ MORE: Vanuatu quake: Rescue teams continue Port Vila hunt for survivors
• ‘They’re struggling’: The 3300 Ni-Vanuatu in New Zealand
• Immediate response still the focus in Vanuatu, but move to rebuild coming, High Commissioner says
• Stranded workers desperate to get home to their families in quake-stricken Vanuatu

Searchers were racing against time to find survivors in the rubble, Pacific correspondent Barbara Dreaver reported for 1News Breakfast from Port Vila.

She also said that aftershocks continued to shake the country, making search efforts more difficult.

“Our team has integrated with the Australians, that is to make the most of this very small window that they have now to find survivors,” she said.

“Time is not on their side, so they’ve really got to make the most of it.

“It’s a very volatile situation still, we’ve been speaking to some very distressed people trying to get home.”

Volunteers and rescue teams arrive at Ifira, a small island off Port Vila, after the #earthquake that hit #Vanuatu. The area is obstructed by large rocks resulting from #landslides. The death toll rose to 14, with dozens injured.#extremeweather#nature#climate pic.twitter.com/ZBapgvDM6p

— Genesis Watchman Report (@ReportWatchman) December 18, 2024

The New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) said late last night that a flight carrying 93 passengers, almost all Kiwis and their families, had left Port Vila at about 7.45pm New Zealand time.

“A small number of foreign nationals are also being assisted on this flight,” the NZDF said.

Foreign Minister Winston Peters confirmed the flight’s arrival overnight.

He wrote on X at about 5.30am today: “We are pleased to have evacuated 93 people from Port Vila on a @NZDefenceForce flight overnight.

“The passengers were mostly New Zealanders and their families, but also included around 12 foreign nationals from Samoa, the United Kingdom, Singapore, France and Finland.

“Our consular team continues to assist New Zealanders affected by the earthquake in Vanuatu.”

Any Kiwis still in Vanuatu were urged to call MFAT on +64 99 20 20 20.

“New Zealand’s efforts to aid Vanuatu with its earthquake response, through the provision of personnel and relief supplies, continues,” Peters said.

Australian couple describe earthquake ‘mayhem’

Australian couple Susie Nailon and her partner Tony Ferreira told 1News about the “mayhem” of being inside the Billabong shop when the quake hit.

“It sort of started to rumble a little bit and I looked up in the ceiling and saw the ceiling start to come down on the fluorescent light. But it wasn’t just a shake, it no longer shook left or right, the whole ground started to wave,” said Ferreira.

“The whole roof had caved down . . .  It just felt like a deck of cards. [It came] straight down, flattened everything.

“And the force of it just pushed all the windows, plastered glass straight out in the road from all that weight,” he said.

He said there were about six or seven others in the shop with them at the time, and said the couple only made it out by “literally seconds”.

“If my rack had been a couple more metres in, then there’s no chance. It was that quick. There was no warning,” he said.

Nailon said the aftershocks had been really triggering, and as soon as she felt something she was “straight out the door”.

“No one has a chance if you’re in the wrong place at the wrong time,” she said.

Kiwi helping out in Vanuatu

New Zealander Jason Horan, who lives in Port Vila, told 1News it was “just chaos” in the aftermath of the quake.

“There [were] people lying on the ground everywhere, buildings falling down, so it was pretty scary,” he said.

He said he watched the road move “like a wave”.

Since the quake, Horan said he had been helping others simply because he wanted to.

“I’ve been running everybody around, just trying to supply everybody with food and water. So I go around to every hotel and resort making sure they know who to talk to and stuff like that.”

He said he wanted to do his part in “making sure people are okay”.

“All the locals are pulling together though . . .  they’re resilient, so it’s really good.”

NZ High Commissioner on quake and what comes next

New Zealand High Commissioner to Vanuatu Nicci Simmonds said the commission was in the top storey of a three-storey concrete building.

“I was at my desk at the time [of the quake], so that’s about as far away from the entry/exit as you can get,” she said.

“So you follow your schoolgirl training and you just get under the table, holding on while it jumped around a lot. A lot of noise.”

She said there was dust everywhere when the shaking stopped. She tried to check on a colleague.

“Very close to her desk, the building had completely separated. There was a three-storey drop.”

Everyone managed to get out of the building, Simmonds said. Initially, communications were the biggest challenge, she added.

“Now, it’s making sure that reliable safe drinking water, power, and basic infrastructure is up and running.”

Simmonds said the impact was “highly localised”, based on aerial surveillance.

“It’s a significant, major event in Port Vila, but it doesn’t appear that there have been villages buried by landslides elsewhere, so that’s been an enormous relief.”

She said the response was “the kind of job that surges, and peaks, and changes”.

Republished from 1News with permission.

By Koroi Hawkins, RNZ Pacific news editor

There are conflicting reports of the official death toll from this week’s massive earthquake in Vanuatu as rescue teams continue to scour the rubble for survivors.

On Tuesday, the Vanuatu National Disaster Management Office reported 14 deaths.

It said four people had been confirmed dead by the hospital, six others were killed in a landslide and four others died in a collapsed building.

• READ MORE: Stranded workers desperate to get home to their families in quake-stricken Vanuatu
• Live RNZ News feed

But yesterday, the disaster management office reported only nine people had been confirmed dead by the hospital and made no mention of the deaths it had earlier attributed to the landslides and collapsed buildings.

One consistent figure is the more than 200 people injured, with the hospital saying many patients were being treated for broken bones.

Damage and destruction
According to the Vanuatu government’s disaster assessment team, most of the damage from the earthquake had been to the Port Vila CBD on the main island of Efate.

This area has been closed to the public and search and rescue operations were ongoing.

Any buildings still standing had sustained significant structural damage.

The Port Vila main wharf remained closed due to a major landslide.

The two main water reservoirs supplying Port Vila had been totally destroyed and would require reconstruction — an assessment of the rest of the water network was ongoing.

A boil water notice is in place for all of Vila.

Power and telecommunications
The utility company Unelco is working to restore power and water supply.

Vodafone Vanuatu informed its customers that instant messaging on Messenger, Viber and WhatsApp had been restored on its mobile network.

Audio and video calling via these platforms, however, was still unavailable by today.

Vodafone said its team was working hard to resolve these issues and fully restore its internet services.

State of emergency
A one-week state of emergency was declared on Tuesday by the President, Nikenike Vurobaravu, for the worst affected areas.

Police had been urging people to adhere to the nightly curfew of 6pm to 6am local time.

They had also warned of a greater chance of opportunistic crimes being committed after the disaster and urged everyone to look out for each other.

Commercial flights
There were no commercial flights operating into or out of Vanuatu.

Local authorities said on Tuesday they were closing the Bauerfield International Airport to commercial flights for 72 hours to repair damage and prioritise disaster relief flights.

Passengers booked to fly Fiji Airways to Vila on Thursday had their flights moved to December 21.

Solomon Airlines had also indicated it would resume flying to Vanuatu from Saturday.

Virgin Airlines has cancelled flights until Sunday and a spokesperson for the Qantas Group told the ABC they were monitoring the situation closely.

International aid
International defence and medical personnel, search and rescue teams and disaster response experts from New Zealand, Australia and France were now on the ground in Port Vila.

They were helping local emergency response teams, which had been working around the clock since Tuesday’s 7.3 magnitude quake alongside locally based staff at UN agencies and non-government organisations in Vila.

Time is of the essence for the teams scouring the rubble for any sign of survivors.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Vanuatu is taking stock of damage from a powerful 7.3 magnitude earthquake that has killed at least 14 people and collapsed buildings in the capital Port Vila, as the first trickle of international assistance began arriving in the disaster-prone Pacific nation.

The quake rattled the island nation, located about 1900km northeast of the Australian city of Brisbane, not long after midday on Tuesday, sending people in restaurants and shops running into the streets of Port Vila.

The National Disaster Management office said in a report that 14 people had been confirmed dead and 200 treated for injuries, with the numbers expected to increase.

• READ MORE: Vanuatu quake: Services still down nearly 24 hours after Port Vila hit
• Vanuatu quake: Death toll rises – 14 dead, hundreds hurt in 7.3 disaster
• NZ rescue teams head for Vanuatu

Of those killed, six died in a landslide, four at the Vila Central Hospital and four in the Billabong building, which collapsed in downtown Port Vila.

Two Chinese nationals were among the dead, Chinese Ambassador to Vanuatu Li Minggang told state media yesterday.

On Tuesday evening, Prime Minister Charlot Salwai declared a week-long state of emergency and set a curfew of 6 pm to 6 am.

Rescue efforts are focused on downtown Port Vila on the main island Efate, where the NDMO said at least 10 buildings, including one housing multiple diplomatic missions, suffered major structural damage.

Survivors trapped
Emergency teams worked through the night in a bid to find survivors trapped in the rubble, using heavy machinery such as excavators and cranes, along with shovels and hand grinders, videos posted to social media showed.

Two major commercial buildings, the Wong store and the Billabong shop, collapsed in the quake, according to Basil Leodoro, a surgeon and director of Helpr-1 Operations at Respond Global in Vanuatu.

“Vanuatu Mobile Force, ProRescue and ambulance teams are helping to remove casualties from the wreckage. So far they’ve been able to pull two,” said Leodoro in a social post yesterday morning, citing official reports.

“There are several others reported to be missing, still under the wreckage, coming to a total of about seven.”

People wounded in the disaster are being treated at two health facilities, the Vila Central Hospital and a second health clinic opened at the Vanuatu Mobile Force (VMF) base at Cooks Barracks, he said.

“From the initial reports at Vila Central Hospital, we know the hospital is overrun with casualties being brought in,” Leodoro said.

“The emergency team at the hospital have been working overnight to try to handle the number of casualties and walking wounded that are coming in, with triage being performed outside.”

“There are 14 confirmed deaths, and that number is likely to rise.”

‘Ring of Fire’
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said in an update that there was damage to the hospital and the “operating theatre is non-functional, and overall healthcare capacity is overwhelmed.”

Vanuatu, an archipelago that straddles the seismically active Pacific “Ring of Fire,” is one of the most disaster-prone countries in the world and is frequently hit by cyclones, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.

The UN agency estimated 116,000 people could be affected by this earthquake.

The government reported damage to power lines and water supplies in urban areas, while telecommunications were down, with Starlink providing the main form of connectivity to the outside world.

“Two major water reserves in the Ohlen area which supplies water to Port Vila are totally destroyed and will need reconstruction,” the NDMO said on Tuesday.

The Vanuatu Broadcasting and Television Corporation (VBTC) said in a statement that its facilities were damaged in the quake and it was operating only a limited radio service.

Australia, New Zealand and France said they had dispatched aid and emergency response teams to Vanuatu and were helping to assess the extent of damage.

Airport closed
Airports Vanuatu CEO Jason Rakau said the airport was closed for commercial airplanes for 72 hours to allow humanitarian flights to land, VBTC reported.

A post on X from France’s ambassador to Vanuatu, Jean-Baptiste Jeangène Vilmer, showed that three military engineers with satellite communications equipment had arrived by helicopter from the French territory of New Caledonia.

Aid supplies are already stationed in locations across Vanuatu as part of their disaster preparations, Katie Greenwood, head of the Pacific delegation at the Red Cross, said in another post to X.

Glen Craig, the chairman of the Vanuatu Business Resilience Council, said most damage was centered within 5km of Port Vila’s central business district.

“In terms of residential housing, it is far, far less significant than a cyclone,” he told BenarNews.

Most damage to businesses would be insurable, but of more concern would be a loss of income from tourism, he said.

“If tourists keep coming, we’re going to be okay,” he said. “If tourists just suddenly decide it’s all too hard, we’re in a bit of trouble.”

Vanuatu is home to about 300,000 on its 13 main islands and many smaller ones.

Its government declared a six-month national emergency early last year after it was hit by back-to-back tropical cyclones Judy and Kevin and a 6.5 magnitude earthquake within several days.

Republished from BenarNews with permission.

World Vision’s Vanuatu country director says electricity and water are still affected in the capital Port Vila and strategic bridges connecting the city are damaged, nearly 24 hours after a 7.3 earthquake just before 1pm on Tuesday afternoon.

The city has had multiple aftershocks since, with the strongest this morning reaching a magnitude 5.5.

At least 14 people are confirmed to have been killed and more than 200 people are injured.

• READ MORE: Vanuatu quake: Death toll rises – 14 dead, hundreds hurt in 7.3 disaster
• Buildings ‘pancaked’ in Vanuatu as 7.3 magnitude quake strikes off capital Port Vila
• Powerful 7.3 magnitude quake strikes Vanuatu – serious damage in Vila
• Violent’ earthquake strikes Vanuatu — at least one reported dead
• RNZ live news: Vanuatu earthquake updates
• ABC: Why earthquakes are more common in places such as Vanuatu

World Vision’s Clement Chipokolo said the aftershocks are making everyone more vulnerable.

“We’re still out of electricity; we’re out of water as well and most of the stores are closed,” Chipokolo said.

“We have queues that are forming in the stores that are open for people to get essentials, especially water.”

He said the main priority is to recover those buried under rubble and recover bodies, while service providers were frantically trying to restore water and power.

He said the public was starting to come to grips with what had happened.

“I think we did not really gauge the scale of the impact yesterday, but now the public are sucking it in — how much we went through yesterday and by extension today.”

Vanuatu is one of the most natural disaster-prone countries in the world. It was hit by three severe tropical cyclones last year.

“We are a country that’s quite resilient to disasters but this was not a disaster that we anticipated or probably prepared for,” Chipokolo said.

However, he said the National Disaster Management Office (NDMO). which is the government arm that manages disasters, were on standby to support because of the cyclone season.

RNZ News also reports that help is slowly arriving, with incoming support from New Zealand, Australia and France. The airport in Port Vila is not operational other than for humanitarian assistance.

There are concerns about a lack of safe drinking water and Unicef Vanuatu Field Office Eric Durpaire told RNZ Midday Report there had been an increase in cases of diarrhoea.

Two Ministry of Foreign Affairs staff previously unaccounted for have been found safe.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

My friend Jamie just shared this video of the moment the earthquake struck his home. Amazing. pic.twitter.com/FaR24r2DeJ

— Dan McGarry (@VanuatuDan) December 18, 2024

Vanuatu is now in a state of emergency with at least 14 confirmed deaths following a 7.3 magnitude earthquake that struck the capital Port Vila yesterday, followed by
a 6.1 quake and other after shocks today.

According to the National Disaster Management Office (NDMO) in Vanuatu, more than 200 people were injured, with the numbers expected to rise.

The NDMO also reported that 10 buildings were damaged, included a building that housed the embassies of the United States and the United Kingdom, and the New Zealand High Commission.

• READ MORE: Vanuatu quake: Death toll rises – 14 dead, hundreds hurt in 7.3 disaster
• Buildings ‘pancaked’ in Vanuatu as 7.3 magnitude quake strikes off capital Port Vila
• Powerful 7.3 magnitude quake strikes Vanuatu – serious damage in Vila
• Violent’ earthquake strikes Vanuatu — at least one reported dead
• RNZ live news: Vanuatu earthquake updates
• ABC: Why earthquakes are more common in places such as Vanuatu

The Joint Police Operation Centre is assisting with search and rescue operations, including the planned deployment of medical teams equipped with heavy machinery. Efforts to restore power and water supplies are also ongoing, the NDMO added.

Meanwhile, Fiji’s Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka said in a statement that his country stood ready to help in any way it could.

“I extend my sincere condolences to the families who have lost their loved ones, and I wish those injured a quick recovery,” said Rabuka.

Although Port Vila airport remained closed to commercial flights, aerial assessments were underway.

The Head of Delegation for the International Federation of Red Cross (IFRC) Pacific, Katie Greenwood, shared in a post on X that their Emergency Operations Centre was now active, with staff and volunteers working tirelessly to assist those affected by the earthquake.

The University of the South Pacific (USP) has also expressed its sympathies to Vanuatu.

In an advisory, USP stated that its Emalus Campus would remain closed, following advice from the Campus DISMAC Committee. The closure would enable essential teams to assess and repair damage while national authorities address public infrastructure concerns.

Rescue operation continue in Port Vila, Vanuatu (it is 3:45am)
3 people have been pulled out of rubble alive, with one of them in serious condition.
All the staff from American Embassy is safe. #earthquake #sismo #Vanuatu #terremoto pic.twitter.com/oDVUjvJYci

— Disasters Daily (@DisastersAndI) December 17, 2024

Personnel from the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) Pacific are on the ground in Vanuatu and are collaborating with the government, civil society organisations, and development partners to support immediate response efforts.

UNICEF, in a social media update, said it has already dispatched first aid kits and Interagency Emergency Health Kits (IEHK) to health facilities. It added that prepositioned supplies, including WASH, child protection, health, ECD, nutrition, and education kits, along with tents and first aid kits, are ready for distribution to reach at least 3000 people.

The UNICEF Vanuatu field office, comprising 19 staff and consultants, was working with local authorities and partners to assess the extent of the damage and determine response needs.

Published in partnership with the University of the South Pacific Journalism Programme’s Wansolwara News.

The death toll from Vanuatu’s 7.3 earthquake is expected to rise because concrete buildings have collapsed with people inside in the capital Port Vila.

International Federation of Red Cross Pacific head of delegation Katie Greenwood posted on X that the Vanuatu government was reporting 14 confirmed fatalities and 200 people were treated for injuries at the main hospital in Port Vila.

Rescue efforts to retrieve people trapped by fallen buildings and rubble have continued overnight.

• READ MORE: Buildings ‘pancaked’ in Vanuatu as 7.3 magnitude quake strikes off capital Port Vila
• Powerful 7.3 magnitude quake strikes Vanuatu – serious damage in Vila
• Violent’ earthquake strikes Vanuatu — at least one reported dead
• RNZ live news: Vanuatu earthquake updates
• ABC: Why earthquakes are more common in places such as Vanuatu

Vanuatu Government is reporting 14 confirmed fatalities and 200 treated for injuries at main hospital in Port Vila. Local humanitarian network activated and @vanuaturedcross leads the Shelter response with Government and support from @ifrc

— Katie Greenwood (@KatiegIFRC) December 17, 2024

In a press conference, caretaker Vanuatu Prime Minister Charlot Salwai said a State of Emergency and curfew were in place in the worst affected areas.

“Urgently request international assistance,” he said.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs estimated 116,000 people had been affected by the quake and earlier said there were six unconfirmed deaths.

Vanuatu has been experiencing aftershocks following Tuesday’s quake, the ABC reports.

The New Zealand High Commission was among buildings that have been damaged.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

• Follow RNZ News live blog for updates

Rescue operation continue in Port Vila, Vanuatu (it is 3:45am)
3 people have been pulled out of rubble alive, with one of them in serious condition.
All the staff from American Embassy is safe. #earthquake #sismo #Vanuatu #terremoto pic.twitter.com/oDVUjvJYci

— Disasters Daily (@DisastersAndI) December 17, 2024

A strong 7.3 magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of Vanuatu today, US geologists said, severely damaging a number of buildings in the capital, crushing cars and briefly triggering a tsunami warning.

Witnesses described a “violent shake” and widespread damage to Port Vila, located about 1900km northeast of the Australian city of Brisbane.

The Pacific island nation is ranked as one of the world’s most at-risk countries from natural disasters and extreme weather events, including cyclones and volcanic eruptions.

• READ MORE: Powerful 7.3 magnitude quake strikes Vanuatu – serious damage in Vila
• Violent’ earthquake strikes Vanuatu — at least one reported dead
• RNZ live news: Large 7.3 magnitude earthquake strikes near Vanuatu
• ABC: Why earthquakes are more common in places such as Vanuatu

Michael Thompson, an adventure tour operator based in the capital, said the quake was “bigger than anything” he had felt in his 20 years living in Vanuatu.

“I was caught in the office with my colleague,” he told BenarNews. “When we came outside, it was just chaos everywhere. There have been a couple of buildings that have pancaked.

“You can hear noises and kind of muffled screams inside.”

Video footage taken by Thompson outside the US embassy showed the bottom floor of the building in downtown Port Vila had partially collapsed. Its windows are buckled and the foundations have been turned to rubble.

“It looks dangerous’
“We stood there yelling out to see if there was anyone inside the building,” Thompson said. “It looks really dangerous.”

The building also hosts the British, French and New Zealand missions.

Just down the main road from the embassy building, search and rescue teams were trying to force their way into a commercial building through the tin roof, Thompson said, but at the pace they were going it would be a “24 hour operation”.

Bottom line: It’s bad. People died, and many more were hurt. Some have lost their home, and many will find it hard to get back to work. Repairs will likely stretch for years, as they always do in the wake of disaster.

— Dan McGarry (@VanuatuDan) December 17, 2024

“We need help. We need medical evacuation and we need qualified rescue personnel. That’s the message,” he said.

The quake was recorded at a depth of 43km and centered 30km west of the capital Port-Vila, according to the US Geological Survey (USGS).

The US Tsunami Warning System cancelled an initial tsunami warning for coastal communities in Vanuatu within 300km of the epicenter.

The quake hit the island nation not long after midday, coming into peak tourist season, when the streets of Port Vila were packed with people shopping and eating in restaurants, Thompson said.

One dead body
He had seen at least one dead body among the rubble.

“The police are out trying to keep people back,” he said. “But it’s a pretty big situation here.”

In other videos posted online people can be seen running through the streets of the capital past shop fronts that had fallen onto cars. Elsewhere, a cliff behind the container port in Port Vila appears to have collapsed.

Dan McGarry, a Port Vila-based journalist, described the earthquake on social platform X as a “violent, high frequency vertical shake” that lasted about 30 seconds, adding the power was out around the city.

Vanuatu, home to about 300,000 on its 13 main islands and many smaller ones, is prone to earthquakes and volcanic eruptions because it straddles the seismically active Pacific “Ring of Fire.”

Vanuatu’s government declared a six-month national emergency early last year after it was hit by back-to-back tropical cyclones Judy and Kevin and a 6.5 magnitude earthquake within several days.

Republished from BenarNews with permission.

A large 7.3 magnitude earthquake has struck off the coast of Vanuatu’s capital Port Vila , shortly after 3pm NZT today.

The US Geological Survey says the quake was recorded at a depth of 10 km (6.21 miles).

Locals have been sharing footage of serious damage to infrastructure in Port Vila.

• READ MORE: ‘Violent’ earthquake strikes Vanuatu — at least one reported dead

According to one post on Vanuatu Dialogue Live Facebook group, the building which is occupied by diplomatic embassies has suffered significant damage.

There are also reports of people trapped under buildings that have collapsed from the shake.

Buildings collapsed in Port Vila, Vanuatu after strong 7.4 earthquake.
Rescuers trying to reach trapped people. #earthquake #Vanuatu #terremoto #sismo pic.twitter.com/UCbRiW6bLb

— Disasters Daily (@DisastersAndI) December 17, 2024

Tsunami waves
The US Tsunami Warning Centre in Hawai’i said tsunami waves had been observed and were forecast for some coasts.

It expected tsunami waves reaching one meter to be possible for some coasts of Vanuatu.

The tsunami was expected to reach the Anatom Island and Esperitu Santo in Vanuatu.

Fiji, Kermadic Islands, Kiribati, New Caledonia, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Tuvalu and Wallis and Futuna faced a forecast for tsunami waves less than 30 cm high.

It said the coastal regions of Hawai’i, American Samoa, Guam and the CNMI should refer to Pacific Tsunami Warning Center messages.

Massive earthquake in Port Vila just now.

— Dan McGarry (@VanuatuDan) December 17, 2024

Massive landslides near our international shipping terminal. A lot of digging out ahead. This is going to impact our ability to respond. pic.twitter.com/dpgyK8tcpf

— Dan McGarry (@VanuatuDan) December 17, 2024

Video by Dan McGarry.

One News reports that the NZ High Commission building “sustained significant damage”.

New Zealand’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said it had been in contact with the country’s High Commissioner Nicci Simmonds in Port Vila.

“Our High Commission building, which is co-located with the United States, the French and the United Kingdom, has sustained significant damage.

Footage posted to X shows damage to the High Commission building in Port Villa.

7.4 Earthquake damage in Vanuatu.
December 17, 2024 #earthquake #sismo #terremoto pic.twitter.com/8n6z0QEaQe

— Disasters Daily (@DisastersAndI) December 17, 2024

“We are in the process of contacting our staff to check they are safe.”

Forty five New Zealanders were registered on SafeTravel as being in Vanuatu. The ministry said it expected there would be more who were not registered.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ with additional information from Vanuatu journalist Dan McGarry’s news feed.

Sepik villagers hit by Papua New Guinea’s earthquake flooding are desperate for clean water, says local volunteer Charles Marlow

“Since the flood, the main Sepik River we have been drinking from is not safe anymore, evidence of faeces is seen floating on the water,” Marlow told the PNG Post-Courier.

“When the earthquake struck on Monday, most tanks of most houses in the Sepik River area burst.

• READ MORE: Disaster minister Joseph briefs PNG on quake and crises hitting nation
• Other PNG disaster reports

“Right now, I can say people are going hungry, food has become scarce and we no longer have access to safer water source to drink from,” Marlow said in an interview.

“I live in Pagwi area. Today I went by boat to three nearby villages and returned. I spoke to the people and did my own assessment on the situation as a volunteer.

“People are in desperate need of food and drinking water.

“They cannot harvest sago or food from the gardens, everything has been destroyed by the high tide from the main Sepik River which has covered the nearby inlands where sago and other garden produce are harvested from.

Houses collapsed
“From Pagwi, I went to Savanaut then to Yenjimangua and Naurange villages.

“In Yenjimangua seven houses collapsed and in Niaurange eight houses altogether sank into the water.

“No casualty from the earthquake was reported from those three villages but there are deaths I heard in other villages I did not visit,” he said.

East Sepik Provincial Administrator Samson Torovi said the 28 local level governments in areas affected by flood have been allocated relief funding as of yesterday.

“The LLG presidents of our 28 local level governments have resolved to use the K200,000 (about NZ$88,000) provincial support to immediately supply food stuff, canvas and relief supplies to our people,” Torovi said.

“The East Sepik Provincial Disaster Management team will draw down on its internal revenue allocation of K200,000 in this year’s budget to commence mobilisation of relief work at the provincial level.”

Phoebe Gwangilo is a PNG Post-Courier reporter. Republished with with permission.

Papua New Guinea’s Defence Minister and minister responsible for the National Disaster Centre Dr Billy Joseph confirmed today that the government — with coordinated support from all stakeholder agencies and development partners — was responding appropriately to the natural disasters that has hit many parts of the country.

The National Disaster Center (NDC) is the national coordinating agency and is working with provincial governments and district development authorities (DDAs) as well as the Department of Works and Highways, PNG Defence Force and other stakeholders to coordinate and respond promptly.

The East Sepik provincial earthquake on Sunday left at least three dead and more than 1000 homes collapsed.

• READ MORE: Three people reported dead, 1000 homes destroyed by PNG earthquake

The US Geological Survey said it was magnitude 6.9 and just over 40 km deep.

King tides and heavy flooding
The minister confirmed that about 10 provinces are getting the necessary assistance from the National Disaster Center, including Goroka/EHP which was not included in the initial report provided to his office.

PNG Defence Force troops are working closely with the Simbu Provincial Government and Gumine DDA and their respective leaderships as Simbu was one of the worst affected provinces.

7 people missing off the coast of New Ireland Province
Nine people boarded a banana boat at Kavieng for Emirau Island but did not make it due to heavy weather conditions when the boat capsized.

Two of the young men swam to the island to look for help while seven others made a makeshift raft and floated awaiting assistance.

“As of today, seven people are still missing and our search is still active — if we don’t find them after 72 hours, we will declare them lost and the search will be discontinued,” Minister Joseph said.

The Australian Defence Force has provided a C27 aircraft to conduct low aerial surveillance of the subject areas.

A PNGDF Navy Patrol Boat has also been deployed to the area but no sightings have been reported.

The Search and Rescue operations are being coordinated by the National Maritime Safety Authority with oversight provided by the PNG Defence Force.

East Sepik Province earthquake
NDC is working very closely with the leaders of East Sepik, including the provincial government, to ensure much needed help reach the people that need it.

An emergency allocation of K200,000 (about NZ$90,000) has been made available for food, water, shelter and medicines etc as seen appropriate by the Provincial Disaster Committee.

It is at their disposal. A commercial helicopter is now in Wewak to assist in the relief operations and the PNDF military helicopter will join shortly.

“We are also mobilising support from our bilateral partners to assist but the challenge is now for the Provincial Disaster Center to provide reports to NDC so we define and coordinate what kind of emergency assistance is required,” Minister Joseph said.

Minister Joseph further warned Papua New Guineans to take precautions and not take risks, especially at sea, as the country’s emergency services are stretched and rescue efforts may not happen in time.

Miriam Zarriga is a PNG Post-Courier reporter. Republished with permission.

New Zealand’s National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) is warning coastal areas  are expected to experience strong and unusual currents and unpredictable surges following a magnitude 7.7 earthquake in the Pacific.

A tsunami threat was issued for Vanuatu, Fiji and New Caledonia after the 7.7 magnitude earthquake struck southeast of the Loyalty Islands.

The warnings were issued just after 3pm by the Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre. The earthquake was nearly 38 km deep.

• READ MORE: Tsunami warning for 7.7 magnitude earthquake cancelled

In its warning, NEMA said: “Strong currents and surges can injure and drown people. There is a danger to swimmers, surfers, people fishing, and anyone in or near the water close to shore.

“People … should move out of the water, off beaches and shore areas and away from harbours, marinas, rivers and estuaries.”

The first tsunami activity causing these strong currents and surges may reach New Zealand in the areas North Cape at approximately 5pm, NEMA said.

“This may be later and the first tsunami activity may not be the most significant. Strong and unusual currents and unpredictable surges will continue for several hours and the threat must be regarded as real until this advisory is cancelled.”

Coastal inundation was not expected, NEMA said.

The areas under threat:

• The West Coast of the North Island from Cape Reinga to Whanganui including the West Coast of Auckland, Manukau Harbour and New Plymouth
• The East Coast of the North Island from Cape Reinga to Tolaga Bay including Whangārei, Great Barrier Island, the East Coast of Auckland, Waiheke Island, Waitematā Harbour, Tauranga, Whakatane and Opotiki
• The West Coast of the South Island from Farewell spit to Milford Sound including Westport, Greymouth and Hokitika

Advice for people in areas under threat:

• Stay off beaches and shore areas
• People on boats, liveboards and at marinas should leave their boats/vessels and move onto shore. Do not return to boats unless instructed by officials
• Move out of the water, off beaches and shore areas and away from harbours, marinas, rivers and estuaries
• Do not go to the coast to watch the unusual wave activity as there may be dangerous and unpredictable surges
• There is no need to evacuate other areas unless directly advised by local civil defence authorities
• Listen to local civil defence authorities and follow any instructions and share this information with family, neighbours and friends

RNZ Pacific senior reporter Walter Zweifel said the warning broadcast for New Caledonia on RRB, a commercial radio station, applied to all islands, with people being asked to evacuate coastal areas for higher ground.

Vanuatu Meteorology and Geo-Hazards Department issued the following statement: “An earthquake of this size has the potential to cause destructive tsunami that can strike coastlines near the epicenter within minutes and more distant coastlines within hours.

“The National Disaster Management Office advises people over all Vanuatu group to take appropriate action and precautionary measures upon receiving this advisory. This includes immediate evacuation from coastal areas to higher grounds.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Vanuatu has been under a state of emergency, after two earthquakes and two cyclones hit in as many days, reports ABC News.

Hundreds of people remained in emergency evacuation centres in the capital Port Vila as Tropical Cyclone Kevin brought destructive winds and heavy rainfall.

The Fiji Meteorology Service said wind gusts reached up to 230km an hour in the early morning hours on Saturday.

• READ MORE: Vanuatu residents ‘exhausted’ after two wild cyclones in three days
• PM Kalsakau in cyclone-ravaged Vanuatu declares emergency as new storm bears down
• Other Vanuatu storm reports

No casualties were immediately reported but a number of properties were flattened and many homes and businesses reported power outages, said ABC.

The cyclone built to a category four on Saturday as it passed the capital and travelled south-east.

Port Vila-based journalist Dan McGarry tweeted updates as both cyclones hit.

“Port Vila has properly woken up now. Fuel is in short supply, power is out everywhere, and a boil-water order is in effect,” he tweeted early on Saturday.

“Lots of people at the few hardware stores that were able to open. Some with rather disturbing stories.”

The country’s main newspaper, Vanuatu Daily Post, did not publish on Saturday due to the cyclone, but will publish a special edition tomorrow.

Journalist Witnol Benko has forwarded what might be the first images from the southern island of Erromango. Doesn’t look good. pic.twitter.com/c8SIA1jTL4

— Dan McGarry (@dailypostdan) March 5, 2023

A state of emergency has been declared in Vanuatu following the damage to infrastructure and homes left by severe tropical cyclone Judy.

It comes as the country deals with a second cyclone, called Kevin, bears down on the country.

At 2am local time the category 2 cyclone was about 165km south-west of Santo and 225km west north-west of Malekula.

• READ MORE: Other Vanuatu cyclone reports

Red alerts are in place for Sanma, Malampa, and Penama, with damaging gale force winds expected to affect those provinces within the next 12 hours.

Yellow alerts are in place for Torba and Shefa.

Meanwhile, a magnitude 6.5 earthquake has struck just offshore of Vanuatu.

The US Geological Survey reports the quake struck just after 5am local time, and was 10km deep.

No tsunami warning has been issued.

Action plan announced by PM
Prime Minister Ishmael Kalsakau said that declaring a state of emergency would allow the islands most affected by Judy to receive help immediately.

“I am pleased to announce that the Council of Ministers has met this afternoon [Thursday] and it has approved a request from the National Disaster Committee to ask the President of the Republic of Vanuatu to declare a State of Emergency for the islands that have been highly affected and impacted by tropical cyclone Judy — effective this evening.

“We have had two opportunities to meet with our partners and I am pleased to reveal everyone that has approached us are standing by to assist us in regard to conducting assessments and a quick response and whatever we require them to help us with.

“Therefore, on behalf of the people of Vanuatu and the government, I want to say to all these people thank you so much.

“To all our development partners who even as the tropical cyclone [Judy] started to approach us had already reached out and said they were standing by and ready to assist us.

“Our officials are working around the clock to try and assess the impact of the cyclone [Judy] on all the provinces in the country.

“At this stage they are still compiling an official report that we will be able to work with and which will enable our development partners to appreciate the level of assistance that we will require from them.

“As we speak aerial assessments are being undertaken along with other assessments on the ground to enable us to declare disaster zones in areas that are highly affected.”

Prime Minister Kalsakau said development partners have also offered help with assessments or quick responses to the most affected communities, or any help required by the Vanuatu government.

Aid group ‘gearing up’ to help
The country director for World Vision Vanuatu, Kendra Derousseau, said her organisation stood ready to help in the recovery.

“We are gearing up for some key response areas that we know happen after severe cyclones,” he said.

“That is emergency shelter provisions, such as tarps and also hammers and nails, and also hygiene kits to ensure that basic needs are met, as well as jerry cans so families can have access to clean water.

“And we will be standing by ready to go with those when the government approves us to respond,” she said.

Derousseau said said that while the capital Port Vila lost power its water service was quickly restored.

She said most of the city’s infrastructure appeared to have stood up to the storm but not some residential housing.

“So anyone who was living in either a tradtional house with a thatched roof or a less sturdy house than those with cyclone strapping and nailing would have suffered significant damage to their houses.”

Derousseau said the big concern now was Cyclone Kevin expected to arrive midday today in Port Vila.

Meanwhile, 11 babies from the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at Vila Central Hospital have a new refuge following damage caused by Cyclone Judy.

The babies have been moved to the former outpatient section in tho colonial hospital after the ceiling in the maternity Ward was damaged, causing leaks, making the ward unsafe for the babies in incubators.

There were also leaks in the children’s wards forcing a similar evacuation.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

An earthquake with a magnitude of 5.4 hit Papua’s capital city Jayapura on Thursday afternoon, killing four people, injuring at least five and forcing 700 to flee, emergency officials said.

The shallow earthquake with an epicenter of 10 km deep and located at coordinates 2.60 south and 140.66 east struck at 3.28pm.

Officlals said at least five houses were damaged by the earthquake — three of them heavily and two moderately.

• READ MORE: Four killed by magnitude 5.4 earthquake in Indonesia’s Papua

In addition, a cafe collapsed and fell into the sea, while the building of Jayapura’s Dok 2 Hospital, two churches, a mosque, and a hotel were also damaged.

The earthquake collapsed the top part of the Cendrawasih University postgraduate building.

The Jayapura Mall building in the city centre also suffered cracks on one side of the building, and the roof of the 4th floor collapsed.

“As an effort to handle the disaster emergency, the Jayapura City Disaster Management Agency together with the Papua Province BPBD and related agencies have set up emergency tents, provided evacuation sites, public kitchens and basic support for the evacuees,” spokesperson Abdul Muhari said.

“The urgent needs are emergency tents and generators for electricity.”

Republished with permission.

A massive earthquake has sent shockwave across PNG with at least four dead, properties and key infrastructure destroyed and fears of a mounting death toll.

The 7.6 magnitude earthquake struck at 9:45am yesterday and rocked the newly-built five-star dormitories at the University of Goroka, leaving about 7600 students homeless and forcing PNG Power to shut down the country’s biggest dam at Yonki.

The plant generates and supplies power to Morobe, Madang and the Highlands region. Parts of Highlands Highway in the Markham Valley were cracked open.

• READ MORE: Fears of rising death toll after powerful earthquake rocks eastern Papua New Guinea
• Other earthquake reports in PNG

At the UoG, the students rushed down the stairways and scurried out of the dormitories as a debris of brick blocks, metals and glasses crashed around them. The ceilings and walls cracked open and a section of one of the buildings’ roofs collapsed.

“The earthquake of whatever size it was has hit all our new dormitories to the very core of their foundations,” said a university academic, Dr Maninga.

“We invite the structural engineering professionals to assess the damage before we make any serious decision.

“We will also enquire with the national geohazard centre if we are to expect another earthquake and of what magnitude.

“Also, we look forward to meeting with a team from the DHERST (Department of Higher Education Research Science and Technology) with Minister Don Polye.

Tackling the emergency
“This unfortunate natural disaster has placed us in an emergency situation and we look forward to meeting with them to address this emergency. In the meantime, the students are advised to find shelters where they can.

“Those students from outside the province can use the classrooms for studies and lodging as well.

“The mess will be opened and continue to serve the students.”

The UoG students council representative, Melvin Kink, said the students understood the situation they were in now and would cooperate with the administration to live through it until further advice.

He also told the PNG Post-Courier that their library building was also affected.

PNG Power advised of a total power system outage in Morobe, Madang and the Highlands region following the earthquake.

The power supplier confirmed reports of damages at the Ramu Hydro power station and switch yard and advised that their team would carry out a proper check before they could safely restore power supply to their customers.

First medivac from landslide
The Post-Courier received a report of Manolos Aviation making its first medivac of a couple injured in a landslide as a direct result of the earthquake out of Kabwun district in Morobe Province.

In the Rai Coast, Madang Province, reports were going viral on social media of people and properties buried in landslides.

In Yelia Local Level Government constituency of Obura-Wanenara district in Eastern Highlands Province, Kevin Kojompa, a teacher at the Yelia Primary School, said staff houses were destroyed.

The National Disaster Centre acting director Martin Mose said he had not yet received a full report on the nationwide effects of the earthquake.

Yesterday was a weekend day and the Post-Courier was unable to reach the National Disaster Centre or its provincial branches bout the effects of the earthquake.

Meanwhile, aircraft were using Goroka Airport after the earthquake, which signals that it was not affected.

Republished with permission.

A 7.6 magnitude earthquake has been felt across Papua New Guinea with widespread damage to villages and an unconfirmed number of casualties reported in the Rai Coast district, Madang Province, and Wau, Morobe Province.

News agencies reported at least five dead.

The quake at a depth of 81km struck at 9.46am yesterday and was the result of the interaction between the South Bismarck and India Australia tectonic plates.

• READ MORE: Five killed as powerful earthquake strikes Papua New Guinea

Department of Mineral Policy and Geohazard Management acting assistant director Matthew Mohoi told the PNG Post-Courier that since the earthquake occurred about 65 km west northwest of Lae and the depth was deeper on land, there was no potential for a tsunami.

However, Mohoi said the earthquake was felt very strongly in the Markham Valley region, Lae, and Kainantu in Eastern Highlands Province and was also felt moderately in Port Moresby and the other parts of the country.

He said the earthquake may have caused some damage within the epicentral area of which their office was yet to receive formal reports.

PNG Power Limited chief executive officer Obed Batia confirmed with the newspaper that the Ramu system has been shut down following the earthquake damages to the switchyard.

Ramu power station shut
Batia said the power station had experienced some switch gears damage at North Yonki and it had been shut down for assessment.

“If we see some heavy damage, that might take a while for us to quickly repair and restore and so that’s the situation now,” he said.

“Lae and Madang have diesel gensets so they can be partially supplied, Mt Hagen and Wabag will also be partially supplied, including Kunidawa and Goroka, to service hospitals.”

Batia said he would be informed of the assessment later today before the Ramu Station is back into operations.

Member of Parliament for Rai Coast Kessy Sawang also said that the earthquake had caused big damage to villages in the Finisterre Ranges, where they experienced landslides, and people being buried with houses. Casualties were unconfirmed with one confirmed death.

The local member said she has been in touch with New Tribes Mission and Mission Aviation Fellowship (MAF) who have assisted villages at Nankina.

She said MAF had airlifted several people to Goroka Hospital with four in a critical condition

The Post-Courier was seeking an update from the National Disaster Office.

Melisha Yafoi is a PNG Post-Courier reporter. Republished with permission.

What have we lost because of the pandemic? According to our calculations, a lot — and many of the worst hit countries and regions are far from world media attention.

Typically, damage from any disaster is measured in separate categories: the number of fatalities and injuries it caused, and the financial damage it led to (directly or indirectly).

Only by aggregating these various measures into a comprehensive total can we begin to formulate a fuller picture of the burden of disasters, including pandemics.

• READ MORE: How would digital covid vaccine passports work? And what’s stopping people from faking them?
• Covid lockdowns have human costs as well as benefits. It’s time to consider both
• Global obsession with economic growth will increase risk of deadly pandemics in future

The usual approach has been to attach a price tag to death and illness. Many governments calculate this “value of statistical life”.

They do this based on surveys asking people how much they are willing to pay to reduce some risk (for example, improve a road they often use), or by calculating the additional compensation people demand when they take on high-risk occupations (for example, as a diver on an oil rig).

By observing the amount of money people associate with small changes in mortality risk, one can then calculate the overall price of a “statistical life” as valued by the average person.

By adding the dollar value of asset damage to the “priced” value of life lost (or injured), the overall cost of an adverse event (such as an earthquake or an epidemic) can be calculated.

Calculating ‘lost life years’
But “value of life” prices can vary a lot between and even within countries. There is also an understandable public distaste for putting a price tag on human life. Governments typically do not openly discuss these calculations, making it difficult to assess their legitimacy.

An alternative is a “life years lost index”. It is based on the World Health Organisation (WHO) measure of “disability-adjusted life years” (DALY), calculated for a long list of diseases and published in a yearly account of the associated human costs.

In conventional measurements of the impact of disaster risk, the unit used is dollars. For this alternative index, the unit of measurement is “lost life years” — the loss of the equivalent of one year of full health.

This is a sum of three key measures of the pandemic’s impact: lost life years because of death and sickness from the disease, and the equivalent lost years due to decline in economic activity. The map below presents these figures per person, in order to enable the relevant comparison across countries.

For example, in the map above we see Australia has a life-years-lost figure of 0.02. This means, on average, every person in Australia lost just over seven life days from the pandemic. In New Zealand, where fewer people died and there have been only a few thousand cases, the figure is 0.01, meaning each person lost fewer than four life days.

In India, by contrast, the average person lost nearly 15 days and in Peru the equivalent figure is 25 days. That loss is based on a combination of the precipitous recession and the death and sickness caused by the virus directly.

So, how do we put this in context? Is losing 25 days a catastrophic loss that justifies the kinds of public actions we have observed around the world? We can answer that question by comparing the impact of COVID-19 to other disasters.

The price of a pandemic
When we compare the total aggregate costs of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 with the average annual costs associated with all other disasters in the previous 20 years, we find the pandemic has indeed been extremely costly (in terms of lost life years).

This is despite those past two decades having seen many catastrophic events: horrific tsunamis in Indonesia (2004) and Japan (2011), very damaging hurricanes in the US (2005 and 2017), a high-mortality cyclone in Myanmar (2008), deadly earthquakes in India (2001), Pakistan (2005), China (2008), Haiti (2010) and Nepal (2015), and others.

The graph below shows the life years lost in 2020 by continent, per person, from COVID-19 compared to the average annual cost of all other disasters 2000-2019. As we can see, the costs of the pandemic are much higher — more than three times higher in Asia and more than 30 times higher in Europe.

The most vulnerable countries have been small, open economies such as Fiji, Maldives and Belize, which rely heavily on the export of services, especially tourism.

These are not necessarily countries that have experienced a high number of deaths from the pandemic, but their overall loss is staggering.

More generally, the per-capita loss associated with COVID-19 is particularly high in most of Latin America, southern Africa, southern Europe, India and some of the Pacific Islands. This is in stark contrast to where the global media’s attention has been directed (the US, UK and EU).

Costs will continue to rise
These measures are for 2020 only. Obviously, the pandemic is continuing to rage, and will most likely continue to have an impact on the global economy well into 2022. Many of the adverse economic impacts will still be felt years from now.

Worryingly, some of the countries that have already suffered the greatest economic impact have also been slow to secure enough vaccine doses for their populations. They may well see their economic slumps carry on into next year, especially with larger, richer countries having the resources to buy vaccines first.

Much public and media attention has focused on the death toll and immediate economic impact from COVID-19. But the human and social costs associated with that economic loss are potentially much greater, particularly in poorer countries.

The heavy burden many small countries have borne has, to some extent, been overlooked. Countries such as Lebanon and the Maldives are experiencing dramatic and painful crises, largely under the radar of world attention.

However, our conclusion that the human cost of the economic loss is possibly much higher than the cost associated with health loss does not imply public policies such as lockdowns, border restrictions and quarantines have been unwarranted.

If anything, countries that experienced a deeper health crisis also experienced a deeper economic crisis. There has been no effective trade-off between saving lives and saving livelihoods.

This story is part of a series The Conversation is running on the nexus between disaster, disadvantage and resilience. You can read the rest of the stories here.

Dr Ilan Noy, chair in the Economics of Disasters and Climate Change, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington and Nguyen Doan, doctoral student in economics, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern says it is hard not to feel like New Zealand is having a run of bad luck, with residents waking up today to a tsunami alert amid the covid-19 restrictions.

The tsunami alert was triggered after three quakes overnight – the first of 7.3 magnitude struck about 2.30am just off the east coast of the North Island.

The second was 7.4 magnitude near Kermadec Islands at 6.41am, and the third was a magnitude 8.1 quake near Kermadec Islands at 8.28am.

• READ MORE: Major 8.0 quake at Kermadecs, NZ warning for people to move higher
• RNZ’s tsunami alert live blog

At 3.45pm, the National Emergency Management Agency cancelled all of the tsunami warnings.

Emergency Management Minister Kiritapu Allan said there are no reports of damage at this stage to property, but the focus had been on evacuation and further assessment would follow.

The prime minister said HMNZS Canterbury was due to be at the Kermadec Islands to carry GNS scientists, Sir Peter Blake Trust scholarship holders, and a group of iwi but the covid-19 alert level changes on Sunday had prevented that deployment from happening.

“Otherwise we would have had people on the island at the time and I can’t imagine what that experience would’ve been like,” she said.

Possible ‘dangerous situation’
Ardern said what would have been “a very distressing if not dangerous situation” had been prevented in this instance.

She said when she had felt the earthquake she had checked in with the minister at 2.29am.

Asked about what she thought given the country was dealing with a pandemic and an earthquake, she said: “Bugger it, pretty much what everyone else thought at that time.

“But this is as the minister has said, we are the shaky isles and what we’ve got to do is make sure no matter what experience we have we do everything we can to prepare so that in the future if we have another experience that we are even better prepared than we were.

“As I walked into the Beehive bunker, where we undertake our Civil Defence emergency co-ordination, two things struck me. First that it’s hard not to feel like our country is having a run of bad luck when you have an earthquake, tsunami alert and pandemic to contend with all in one day.”

But she said walking past images of past natural disasters plastered on the walls to the bunker, she realised the efforts of Civil Defence teams.

“We have had our share of tough moments in this country, but within that we have always been blessed incredible people who work in our emergency system.”

Allan said there had been multiple aftershocks after the initial quakes.

Auckland to move to level 2
Meanwhile, Auckland will move to alert level 2 and the rest of New Zealand will move to level 1 at 6am on Sunday morning, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has announced, reports RNZ News.

Ardern announced the move while speaking to media after a cabinet meeting to decide on alert level changes.

This will be reconsidered with a plan to move Auckland down a level at the start of the next weekend if possible, she said.

“If you are sick, stay at home, don’t go to work or school and don’t socialise. Keep track of where you’ve been at all times.”

The restriction of 100 people at events will be in place.

No new cases of covid-19 have been reported in the community for the fifth day in a row or in managed isolation today.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

An 8.0 earthquake has struck near the Kermadec Islands, hours after a 7.4 quake near the Kermadecs and a 7.1 off the North Island coast,

A 7.4 quake struck near the Kermadec Islands earlier this morning. The islands are 800km to 1000km from New Zealand.

National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) said people on the East Coast of the North Island should head to higher ground immediately because of a tsunami threat from the 8.0 quake.

• READ MORE: Follow RNZ’s live blog

In its third earthquake warning, the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) said people in the East Coast of the North Island from the Bay of Islands to Whangārei, from Matata to Tolaga Bay including Whakatāne and Opotiki and Great Barrier Island must move immediately to higher ground.

It said people in the areas indicated on the mane should not wait, but should evacuate these areas even if they didn’t feel the earthquake.

“A damaging tsunami is possible,” it said.

The Kermadec Islands are more than 800km from New Zealand, and is an area where there is a lot of earthquake activity.

The last major quake in the region was in June, also a 7.4 magnitude tremor, which prompted warnings of strong currents around New Zealand’s coast but no damage was reported.

GNS Science seismologist John Ristau said today’s quake was along the boundary of the Pacific and Australian tectonic plates.

It was the second severe quake in New Zealand waters this morning, after a strong 7.1 magnitude quake struck off the north Island coast.

More than 52,000 people reported on GeoNet that they felt the quake. It struck at 2.27am, 105km east of Te Araroa at a depth of 90km.

Hundreds of people moved to higher ground but there have been no immediate reports of damage. A tsunami warning for that quake was cancelled around 6am.

TSUNAMI WARNING: Areas that need to evacuate are indicated on this map. Evacuate these areas even if you did not feel the earthquake. DO NOT WAIT. A damaging tsunami is possible. More info at https://t.co/ccVFYQQoBr pic.twitter.com/bnEgZy8ikF

— National Emergency Management Agency (@NZcivildefence) March 4, 2021

In Suva, according to some alerts Fiji was reportedly on the path of a tsunami but no government alert or signs of movement/panic had been posted.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

A magnitude 7.7 earthquake has struck south-east of New Caledonia’s Loyalty Islands and a tsunnami warning is in place for several countries.

Geoscience Australia said the quake, which struck early this morning, had an epicentre 400 km east of the town of Tadine.

Seismic data indicates the undersea earthquake struck at a depth of 54 km.

Several aftershocks of up to magnitude 6.1 on the Richter scale have occurred.

The US Tsunami Warning System said hazardous tsunami waves up to a level of 1m above the normal tide level are possible for coasts within 1000 km of the epicentre with New Caledonia, Vanuatu and Fiji particularly at risk.

Officials in American Samoa have cancelled a tsunami watch for the territory.

RNZ’s correspondent in Pagopago said officials reported no significant wave had been generated by the earthquake.

New Zealand’s National Emergency Management Agency is warning that coastal areas  could experience strong and unusual currents, and unpredictable surges at the shore.

Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology said there is a tsunami threat to offshore Australian islands and territories.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Papua New Guinea is about to host some of the world’s most powerful leaders at the APEC summit. But as PNG’s moment in the spotlight approaches, RNZ Pacific journalist Johnny Blades asks in a special Insight report today how the poorest of APEC’s members is looking after its citizens at a time of social turmoil in the country.

Driving through the countryside on our way to Port Moresby, the surrounding hills were so parched it seemed that only the hardiest of trees could ever grow here.

But as my Papua New Guinean friend Junior said from behind the wheel of the Land Cruiser, the city was growing so fast it would probably soon spread well beyond the trees anyway.

Half an hour out of PNG’s capital we stopped to get a drink at a roadside stall, where the desolation of not only the landscape but the local people came into sharp focus.

LISTEN: Johnny Blades previews APEC on RNZ Insight

A middle aged man approached our Land Cruiser and asked whether we could give him, his wife, and their two small children a lift into PNG’s capital.

His brow was pursed in troubled lines, the gauntness of his wife was striking. They climbed in, out of the searing dry heat of the Central Province seaboard, and the man introduced himself as Ken Auda.

He explained that he and family were heading from their village to Port Moresby General Hospital.

Despite chronic drug shortages at the hospital, they were desperate to get hold of painkillers for his wife who had cervical cancer, a leading killer of PNG women.

Struggling for a cure
“According to doctors’ examination, they found that ‘your wife will not live (for much longer)’,” Auda explained.

“It gives me financial problems, but I know that I’m struggling my best for my wife to be cured.”

His wife next to him stared out the Land Cruiser’s front window, neither engaging in the conversation nor meeting eye. Their two kids were pre-schoolers. It was hard to tell the age of Auda and his wife. They looked around 60 but they could have been 40 – Papua New Guineans do not generally enjoy longevity.

Cervical cancer is just one of numerous health crises in PNG. Amid chronic shortages of medicines and complacencies around vaccination programmes, meant diseases like polio, malaria and TB have re-emerged, HIV AIDS is resurgent.

Shortages of basic drugs and supplies, echo shortages of health workers, rather like the situation in schools, where there are often not enough teachers for overcrowded classrooms, where up to 70 students can be taught at once, or funding shortfalls force closure.

Grassroots communities around this country of eight million people are resilient, but there’s no escaping the lapsing state of basic services around the country.

Yet according to the current government, led by Prime Minister Peter O’Neill, a unique opportunity for prosperity looms on PNG’s near horizon.

Biggest event
For the past four years, it has increasingly been preoccupied with preparing to host a meeting of leaders from major world powers, the biggest event to take place in this country.

Now, just a couple weeks out from the APEC Leaders Summit, big road and venue constructions are nearing completion and APEC Haus, a grand new national identity building shaped as a traditional sea vessel, has been unveiled on Port Moresby’s waterfront.

“In school I found out that APEC stands for Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation,” Auda said, “but actually… what is APEC?”

APEC, according to PNG’s Deputy Prime Minister and Treasurer Charles Abel, was “part of selling the country”.

“We need investment, we need partnerships, we need capital to develop our country. So APEC is going to present a wonderful marketing opportunity,” he explained.

“Because there’s so many opportunities with the natural wealth that we have and the beautiful people that we have and the wonderful culture that we have. This Asia Pacific region is going to be the major growth driver in the coming years. PNG is well placed here.”

Here at the junction of Asia and the Pacific, 2018 is turning out to be a landmark year, but perhaps for reasons other than what the government projected

Tribal violence
Tribal violence surged again in the Highlands, adding to the death toll from lingering fighting between supporters of rival candidates in last year’s elections. It’s worsened the suffering of a region reeling from February’s magnitude 7.5 earthquake disaster which caused almost 200 deaths and widespread devastation of homes and buildings.

As if that wasn’t enough, a state of emergency was declared in Southern Highlands after major political unrest erupted again in June. The sight of one of the national carrier’s planes destroyed at Mendi airport during the unrest was shocking for Papua New Guineans. Then last month they saw images of a second Air Niugini plane written off, sinking in the sea off an airstrip in Micronesia

Symbolism means a lot in APEC year, and the government’s many critics see signs the country is on the verge of social breakdown.

But the government has trucked on relentlessly with its infrastructure drive for APEC, depending heavily on assistance from the likes of China, with Australia, New Zealand and others chipping in significantly to help PNG pull off the summit.

While Port Moresby may have newly sealed roads in time for the summit, the highway leading into the capital was frequently pot-holed, and even a skilled driver like Junior was having troubled navigating them.

Gripping at the seat, Auda said, in Port Moresby this year, it has been impossible to escape the APEC hoo-ha. But prepared to give it a chance, he suggested APEC could be a potential band-aid for his country.

“APEC should be supplying us some kind of services like education, road infrastructure and health,” he explained.

Election plan
Auda revealed that he intended to stand for a seat in the next local level government election.

“If I win a seat, then I will start putting my submission to (the government), a strategy plan for pushing through government services.”

As Auda outlined his practical plans for the future, his wife, who would probably not live to see him don his campaign rosette, continued to stare out the window.

Only when her little kids started arguing over a fidget spinner did she snap out of it, tending to them affectionately, before taking up a thousand-yard stare again

Promises of “development” have long been a feature of the country’s politics, but rarely come to fruition. Some big resource projects have got off the ground, but the benefit flows have been uneven.

It’s hard for people to swallow the government’s claims that hosting APEC, all its hundreds of meetings this year and the big upcoming summit, will benefit PNG’s general population.

“People say that because of this APEC, all the funds are being misused on APEC,” said Ken, shaking his head

Maserati outcry
This month there was a public outcry over the government’s purchase of 40 Maserati cars and other luxury vehicles to use for transporting leaders at the summit.

The cars were “being committed to be paid for by the private sector…at no overall cost to the State”, PNG’s APEC Minister Justin Tkatchenko said.

We came into the city by the seaside village of Hanuabada, with its houses on stilts above the inshore waters of the harbour.

Here we dropped off the family where they’d be able to catch a bus onwards.

“I have a hope which is Jesus Christ, that my wife will stay until whatever God wants,” said Auda before getting out of the vehicle.

His wife was still staring far away as we drove on. I followed her gaze, which led across the bay to the growing skyline of Port Moresby’s CBD.

The afternoon light bounced off the big buildings.

Just around the corner, on the reclaimed foreshore, APEC Haus stood glistening. Ready or not, PNG’s moment in the sun is coming.

The APEC summit begins on the November 17.

This article is republished under the Pacific Media Centre’s content partnership with Radio New Zealand.

• While PNG promotes APEC big money, PNG youth are building grassroots resilience

The magnitude 7.5 earthquake, and subsequent tsunami, that struck Indonesia days ago has resulted in at least 1,200 deaths.

Authorities are still gauging the extent of the damage, but it is clear the earthquake and tsunami had a devastating effect on the Sulawesi region, particularly the city of Palu.

It’s not the first time earthquakes have caused mass destruction and death in Indonesia. The tsunamis that follow are particularly damaging. But why?

READ MORE: Would a better tsunami warning system have saved lives in Sulawesi?

A combination of plate tectonic in the region, the shape of the coastline, vulnerable communities and a less-than-robust early warning system all combine to make Indonesian tsunamis especially dangerous.

Poorly understood
Indonesia covers many complex tectonic environments. Many details of these are still poorly understood, which hampers our ability to predict earthquake and tsunami risks.

The biggest earthquakes on Earth are “subduction zone” earthquakes, which occur where two tectonic plates meet.

In December 2004 and March 2005, there were a pair of subduction zone earthquakes along the Sunda Trench offshore of the west coast of Sumatra. In particular, the magnitude-9.1 quake in December 2004 generated a devastating tsunami that killed almost a quarter of a million people in countries and islands surrounding the Indian Ocean.

But only looking out for these kinds of earthquakes can blind us to other dangers. Eastern Indonesia has many small microplates, which are jostled around by the motion of the large Australia, Sunda, Pacific and Philippine Sea plates.

The September quake was caused by what’s called a “strike-slip” fault in the interior of one of these small plates. It is rare – although not unknown – for these kinds of quakes to create tsunamis.

The fault systems are rather large, and through erosion processes have created broad river valleys and estuaries. The valley of the Palu river, and its estuary in which the regional capital Palu is located, have been formed by this complex fault system.

Studies of prehistoric earthquakes along this fault system suggests this fault produces magnitude 7-8 earthquakes roughly every 700 years.

Sea floor shapes wave
Another important factor for tsunamis is the depth and shape of the sea floor. This determines the speed of the initial waves. Strong subduction zone earthquakes on the ocean floor can cause the entire ocean water column to lift, then plunge back down.

As the water has momentum, it may fall below sea level and create strong oscillations.

The bulge of water moving outward from the centre of a earthquake maybe of limited height (rarely much more than a metre), but the mass of water is extremely large (depending on the surface area moved by the earthquake).

Tsunami waves can travel very fast, reaching the speed of a jet. In water 2km deep they can travel at 700k/hour, and over very deep ocean can hit 1000km per hour.

When the wave approaches the shallower coast, its speed decreases and the height increases. A tsunami may be 1m high in the open ocean, but rise to 5-10m at the coast. If the approach to the shoreline is steep, this effect is exaggerated and can create waves tens of metres high.

Despite the fact that the waves slow down near the coast, their immense starting speeds mean flat areas can be inundated for kilometres inland.

The ocean floor topography affects the speed of tsunami waves, meaning they move faster over deep areas and slow down over submarine banks. Very steep land, above or below water, can even bend and reflect waves.

More intense, deadly
The coastlines of the Indonesian archipelago are accentuated, in particular in the eastern part and especially at Sulawesi. Palu has a narrow, deep and long bay: perfectly designed to make tsunamis more intense, and more deadly.

This complex configuration also makes it very difficult to model potential tsunamis, so it’s hard to issue timely and accurate warnings to people who may be affected.

The safest and simplest advice for people in coastal areas that have been affected by an earthquake is to get to higher ground immediately, and stay there for a couple of hours. In reality, this is a rather complex problem.

Hawaii and Japan have sophisticated and efficient early warning systems. Replicating these in Indonesia is challenging, given the lack of communications infrastructure and the wide variety of languages spoken throughout the vast island archipelago.

After the 2004 Indian Ocean disaster, international efforts were made to improve tsunami warning networks in the region. Today, Indonesia’s tsunami warning system operates a network of 134 tidal gauge stations, 22 buoys connected to seafloor sensors to transmit advance warnings, land-based seismographs, sirens in about 55 locations, and a system to disseminate warnings by text message.

However, financing and supporting the early warning system in the long term is a considerable problem. The buoys alone cost around US$250,000 each to install and US$50,000 annually for maintenance.

The three major Indonesian agencies for responsible for earthquake and tsunami disaster mitigation have suffered from budget cuts and internal struggles to define roles and responsibilities.

Models insufficient
Lastly, the Palu tsunami event has highlighted that our current tsunami models are insufficient. They do not properly consider multiple earthquake events, or the underwater landslides potentially caused by such quakes.

No early warning system can prevent strong earthquakes. Tsunamis, and the resulting infrastructure damage and fatalities, will most certainly occur in the future. But with a well-developed and reliable early warning system, and better communication and public awareness, we can minimise the tragic consequences.

With earthquakes that occur very close to the beach – often the case in Indonesia – even an ideal system could not disseminate the necessary information quickly enough. Indonesia’s geography and vulnerable coastal settlements makes tsunamis more dangerous, so we need more and concerted efforts to create earthquake and tsunami resilient communities.

This article is republished from The Conversation through a Creative Commons licence.

• Chaos in Palu after quake and tsunami

Dr Anja Scheffers is a professor at Southern Cross University, Lismore, New South Wales.

In the wake of mass destruction caused by Indonesia’s 7.4-magnitude earthquake and the subsequent tsunami, survivors in Palu and Donggala in Central Sulawesi have been scrambling to salvage food supplies and other items, as aid from the central government began to trickle into the region.

Yesterday, many survivors blocked trucks carrying aid to plunder the contents as many have gone hungry and thirsty for days.

A video circulating on Twitter, said to have been taken in Donggala regency, also shows people intercepting a relief aid truck.

VIEW MORE: Drone video footage shows scale of Palu tsunami devastation

The Jakarta Post’s correspondent saw people waiting for fuel at a Pertamina gas station asking the entourage of journalists and officials from Jakarta for drinking water.

“Drinking water, drinking water, please,” some survivors said to passing motorists.

“I ran into a mother and her child at the airport who asked me to share some of my water with her child,” correspondent Andi Hajramurni said.

“Just a little, enough for my child,” Hajramurni quoted the mother as saying to her.

Upset over aid
A pregnant woman was also found exhausted outside the airport. She said she was upset to see aid being unloaded from the planes but none reaching the survivors waiting to leave the city at the airport.

Thousands crowded Mutiara Sis Al Jufri airport to leave the devastated city while staving off hunger and thirst under the scorching heat.

The survivors have been waiting for a chance to flee the city since Saturday, camping outside on mats or cardboard. They were hoping to catch a plane to Makassar to later go to their respective hometowns.

“What is important is to get out of Palu. We have agreed to meet Papa in Makassar and then go to Jakarta,” Paramita said. The 29-year-old, who sustained an injury to her leg from falling concrete debris, is taking her two sisters with her.

Desperate and impatient, the survivors were occupying part of the runway.

An airport official, Syaeful, said that on Sunday night, about 5000 people had waited for a plane at the airport. “The number keeps increasing,” he said.

Some businesses, such as at Masomba traditional market, have opened for businesses and some survivors have bought food supplies.

“I bought some fish,” the Post’s correspondent Ruslan Sangadji, who is also a survivor of the quake, said.

Food, clean water scarce
However, food and clean water are scarce and many are desperate.

In Buluri subdistrict, Ulujadi district in the western part of Palu, survivors blocked roads to intercept trucks carrying food supplies. Police officers in the area are reported to be unable to hold off the crowd.

Similarly, residents in Tawaeli district in central Palu have taken to a nearby port to intercept government aid arriving on ships. The police were also reported to be unable to ward off the desperate crowd.

A handful of residents even looted nearby convenience stores for any life-sustaining item they could find, since aid from the government had not yet arrived.

Many also attempted to siphon fuel from gas stations around the city over the weekend as none of the city’s gas stations were in operation following the earthquake and tsunami that hit the city on Friday.

Jokowi’s message
President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo on Sunday asked quake survivors to be patient as they wait for aid to be distributed upon arriving in Palu, the capital of Central Sulawesi.

Jokowi said it would take one week to prepare the airport so airplanes carrying the supplies could land safely.

“I’m aware there are a lot of issues that need to be resolved as soon as possible, and I hope the people will remain patient in this situation,” he told the reporters.

Yesterday, Jokowi said he would send “as much food as possible” immediately.

Several people also reportedly robbed ATMs and jewelry shops. Twitter user @MpuAnon posted a video showing gold shops that looked like they had been looted.

“Gold shops. Post-looting,” the Twitter user said in the caption.

The police are reported to have ordered a shoot on sight policy against such robbers.

Guards on gas stations
In an attempt to maintain and restore order in the region, the National Police and the National Military have employed personnel to guard several gas stations and convenience stores across Palu, according to the police’s head of communication Brig. Gen. Dedi Prasetyo.

Previously, Home Minister Tjahjo Kumolo advised against looting – not even in the wake of a natural disaster – as the act is considered criminal.

“There’s no justification whatsoever for looting. Everyone’s equally affected by the disaster; their shops destroyed, shopping malls devastated,” Tjahjo said during a televised interview, as quoted by kompas.com.

Prior to Sunday’s statement, news spread on social media that the government had approved of the looting at convenience stores and that the expenses would be covered by the state.

However, Tjahjo denied it, saying that what the government had approved was the transfer of aid funds to the Central Sulawesi administration, to be used for food supplies for survivors.

“We have no home, our village is devastated, therefore I have to move my people to another location.”

The words of the village leader from a remote earthquake-affected village in Papua New Guinea’s Highlands region had an unmistakable desperation.

LISTEN: More on Dateline Pacific (duration 6m40s)

Richard Don’s Yalanda village in Nipa-Kutubu district of Southern Highlands province was largely ruined in February’s magnitude 7.5 quake in the region.

We met him at the Moro airfield near Lake Kutubu. My colleague Koroi Hawkins and I had cadged a couple of seats on a helicopter used by the team leading PNG’s earthquake relief effort.

The chopper was flying around the quake-affected region, offering us startling views of collapsed mountainsides and deformed valleys. The quake and its significant aftershocks had caused many major landslides and landslips.

The slides and slips had taken out a number of villages, and destroyed countless structures. The disaster is estimated to have killed at least 180 people, although in a remote region like this, nobody can give an exact figure.

Badly isolated
When we picked him up at Moro, Richard Don told us that six people from his village had died in the disaster. The village, he explained, was now badly isolated as the main road and bridge which led to Yalanda’s general area had been cut off.

It wasn’t until we flew in with him to the remaining part of Yalanda village, perched as it is on the top of a small mountain, that the precariousness of this community’s position became clear.

The landslips which undermined the flanks of the village had taken huts, foot bridges and food gardens. Homes were collapsed or teetering on the hillside.

We walked up to the top, the village square, where dozens of villagers assembled, carrying axes and small children. Richard Don introduced us to them and they greeted us warmly. Little pigs and dogs wandered by. The kids who milled around had an almost forlorn look about them.

Don said Yalanda’s villagers, of whom there were 1300 in total, feared another big quake and sought to relocate to another location “where it’s more flatter, more good place, for them to resettle themselves”.

“But there are a lot of things to be done, like a road. We require a road network to be completed. I have already given the request to the prime minister.”

PNG’s Prime Minister Peter O’Neill visited Yalanda shortly after the initial quake and was aware of the village’s situation.

Basic supplies
The company Oil Search, a well established player in the local oil and gas sector, had given assistance with basic supplies and logistical support.

Don also mentioned that Yalanda had received help from the World Food Programme, the Red Cross and governments of Australia and New Zealand.

The team led by PNG’s Emergency Controller, Dr Bill Hamblin, has been helping co-ordinate relief in the region and had distributed many re-starter kits to affected communities to help them move gradually into recovery phase. However, villages like Yalanda were not easy to get to.

The village leader indicated the Yalanda community was aware that its request for infrastructure assistance, and help in relocating, would take time to process.

They had already begun clearing trees and establishing food gardens at a new village base at nearby Endela. A few people had already set up temporary, crude huts to live in at this base.

Other villagers had gone to stay at a care centre several kilometres away in Baguale. But around 800 remain in and around this desolate mountain village.

I spoke to a local pastor who conveyed in Tok Pisin (PNG language, or at least his community’s variation of it) how the Yalanda people had lived on this beautiful mountain for centuries, and that moving away would cause great sadness.

Village ‘bagarup’
But a young woman called Ruth Jeff told us in no uncertain terms how relocation was inevitable, because everything about the village was now broken, or in Tok Pisin “bagarup”.

“Bridge bagarap, road bagarap, house bagarap, haus-sik (medical hut) bagarap, garden bagarap. Children feel sick, feel worried, shocked,” she said, indicating the villagers had much work to do to re-establish their homes.

Richard Don presented us with a ten-page report detailing Yalanda’s situation, their relocation plans, request for help and description of assistance required, including items such as water tanks, tarpaulins and ‘spiritual development’.

The villagers we met were effusive in their gratitude for the help they’d received so far. A United Nations consultant who had flown with us in the helicopter was thrilled to find a wrapper for a World Food Programme muesli bar to take back with him as evidence that their assistance had, in this case, reached its target.

Yet the Yalanda community was struggling with food and medical shortages. They were also in desperate need of water tanks and tarpaulins among other relief items.

“My village, my people, I’m very worried, we need to have that road,” Richard Don noted.

“We’ve run out of food. We made a garden, but that can’t be harvest within a month or two. So at the moment we’re very hungry now, and most of the people are really suffering.”

Pilot anxious
The time to leave rolled around quickly. The pilot was looking anxious for us to leave, as we needed to fly back to Mt Hagen before the weather packed in.

As we got in the chopper, dozens of villagers sat on the hilltop, smiling and waving at us. The visit had served as little more than a quick situation update for the relief team representative. Still, the locals seemed grateful for the opportunity to get word out about their plight.

They kept waving as we ascended. The chopper whipped up dirt and debris, trees thrashed around dramatically, and a pig ran away frantically across the village square.
The earthquake disaster has left many Highlanders facing an uncertain future.

I could still see the villagers waving as we flew off and away, until they faded like dots into the brown and green of the mountain.

Johnny Blades and Koroi Hawkins of RNZ Pacific recently travelled to Papua New Guinea for a series of special reports. This article is republished under the Pacific Media Centre’s publishing partnership with Radio New Zealand.

Pacific Media Centre Newsdesk

Tourists have been fleeing the Indonesian island of Lombok since yesterday after a magnitude-6.9 earthquake killed at least 98 people – a death toll expected to rise, reports Al Jazeera.

More than 200 people were seriously injured in Sunday’s shallow quake as rescue workers scrambled to reach survivors in remote areas.

National Disaster Mitigation Agency spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho said the damage was “massive” in northern Lombok. In several districts, more than half of homes were destroyed or severely damaged.

READ MORE: What you need to know about the Lombok earthquake

Al Jazeera reports Nugroho saying the death toll will “definitely increase”, adding more than 20,000 people had been displaced.

Thousands of buildings collapsed, especially in the north, near the earthquake’s epicentre, and power and communications were down in some areas on the popular tourist island.

A tsunami alert was issued immediately after the quake struck, sending panicked people running to higher ground, but it was later rescinded, Al Jazeera reports.

“When it happened, we stood with residents in the middle of the street and watched houses collapse around us,” said Yustrianda Sirio, who was visiting the island.

‘Screamed hysterically’
“Many of us screamed hysterically.”

Some airlines have added extra flights to help tourists leave the island, while about 1200 foreign and domestic tourists were evacuated by boat from three Gili islands off Lombok’s northwest coast, said Nugroho.

Al Jazeera’s Step Vaessen, reporting from Tanjung in northern Lombok (see video), said: “The destruction here is unbelievable.

“After there was a tsunami alert yesterday, a lot of [tourists] panicked; they climbed into trees, they ran into the hills, a lot of people got injured there,” she said.

“There’s no arrangement, there’s no transport, there’s no food, there’s no water for them, so a lot of them are completely lost, they’re completely confused, still scared and the only thing they’re telling me is that they want to leave the country as soon as possible.”

The Indonesian military said it was sending a vessel with medical aid and supplies and would provide logistical support.

• Earlier story – quake toll rises to 91

The death toll in a powerful magnitude-7 earthquake which rocked Lombok and Sumbawa Islands in Indonesia’s West Nusa Tenggara province last night has risen to 91, The Jakarta Post reports.

The Indonesian government has declared a state of emergency.

Antara news agency reported earlier today – with the toll then standing at 37 – the dead victims consisted of 28 in North Lombok district, three in West Lombok district, one in Central Lombok district, one in East Lombok district and four in Mataram city, said the Chief of the Emergency and Logistics Section at the West Nusa Tenggara Provincial Disaster Mitigation Agency Agung Pramudja in a written statement.

Antara said the quake, which rattled the two islands at 06.46 p.m. local time yesterday was centered 8.3 degrees southern latitude and 116.48 degrees eastern longitude at a depth of 15 kilometers.

The Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics (BMKG) issued a tsunami early warning shortly after the quake and lifted it at 09.25 p.m. local time last night.

• Earlier Lombok quake story

An ongoing security crisis in Papua New Guinea’s Hela province is preventing many earthquake-affected communities receiving relief.

February’s magnitude 7.5 quake caused widespread devastation and about 150 deaths in Hela, Southern Highlands and Western provinces.

Hela was the worst-affected but its long-running problem of tribal violence, which has surged since last year’s election period, has now caused international humanitarian agencies to pull out of the province.

Hela’s provincial capital Tari is the focal point of some of the worst tribal fighting, exacerbated by mass displacement of Hela communities caused by the quake.

With more than a dozen tribal killings reported in and around Tari since February, Hela police have recently received reinforcements from other provinces but have often been outnumbered and outgunned by the fighting tribes.

Not even the presence of extra Defence Force personnel in Hela has been able to “We leaders are trying to resolve the problem. But some of the men… it’s too hard for the leaders to control their men.”bring the tribal fighting under control.

The sergeant in charge of Tari police station, Thomas Levongo, said five people were killed in the area last week, scuppering an attempt at peace talks.

‘It’s too hard’
“We leaders are trying to resolve the problem,” he explained. “But some of the men… it’s too hard for the leaders to control their men.”

The head of PNG’s Emergency Disaster Restoration Team said the overall response to the disaster had been successful, in that disease outbreaks and starvation had been prevented so far.

But according to Bill Hamblin, there were areas that Papua New Guinea can improve on in responses to future disasters. Meanwhile, he said there were parts of Hela that his team cannot reach, due to civil unrest.

“Although the UN tried to go into Komo the other day; we’ve had the United Church people who went in there attacked; we’ve had the UN turned back by the security forces because of the helicopters being stoned,” he said.

“So that security situation has to be addressed before you can bring in relief. No organisation’s going to send in people who look like they’re going to get killed.”

UNICEF in Papua New Guinea said humanitarian operations had been suspended in an area where more than 40,000 earthquake affected people were in need.

The agency has called for more global attention, from the UN in New York and Geneva, on the plight of the quake-affected people of Hela.

Too unsafe
Monjur Hossain, the Acting Country Director for PNG, said UNICEF had delivered aid supplies to Tari the capital of Hela after the quakes but could no longer access the province as it was considered too unsafe.

He said the situation was extremely complex, there was very little communication with province due to ongoing unrest, leaving the health and welfare of the people seriously threatened.

“The situation is really grave in terms of the deprivation in terms of the services and the lives of the people,” Hossain said.

“So we’ve been actually working at the regional and global level to raise this issue. We have recently had a global press conference organised in Geneva to raise the issue that we need to talk about Papua New Guinea.”

Despite the suspension of humanitarian services in the area, UNICEF said it had been able to launch a measles and tetanus vaccination campaign in other quake-affected districts of neighbouring Southern Highlands (Mendi-Munihu and Nipa Kutube).

Water and sanitation are among the most pressing needs in Hela and Southern Highlands. UNICEF’s latest situational report on the quake response said it had reached 10,000 people with water purification tablets and was also providing ‘psychosocial’ support.

The UN agency also said 55,000 people were estimated to be displaced and 65 percent of health facilities in Hela and Southern Highlands were severely damaged.

Aftershocks, landslides
The PNG government estimates more than half a million people in total were affected by the quake, its aftershocks and landslides; and 270,000 people – nearly half of whom are children – need urgent assistance.

Many schools are closed, having sustained extensive damages in the quake, although education in the region had already been badly disrupted since last year when the election-related violence spiralled out of control in pockets of both of the Highlands provinces.

Unicef said its funding requirement for the response was US$13 million, but it had a  shortfall of nearly 80 percent.

Meanwhile, the Emergency Disaster Restoration Team is clamping down on misuse of helicopter charters for medevacs.

The team is taking over the management of helicopters in relief operations from the Department of Defence.

Dr Hamblin said unnecessary charter of helicopters, at around US$7000 an hour, had been fast draining emergency funding.

He said opportunists using the choppers to reach health services for medical needs unrelated to the quake needed to be kept in check.

Tasking the helicopters
“We’ve got to control the tasking of those helicopters, so that’s now coming in to my office,” he explained.

“That’s been happening, when a helicopter sees you and someone says ‘oh we’ve got to get our three people out to Dodomona, away we go’, and I’m saying ‘well no way, you don’t go’. We’ve got to look at the priority and see what should be done.”

As the unrest and opportunism complicate the disaster response, the Tari MP James Marape appealed for calm among people in his electorate.

Having this week seen a court petition against his 2017 election win dismissed in PNG’s capital Port Moresby, Marape said he would now turn his efforts to forging peace in Hela and focussing on helping with relief efforts in the province.

He claimed he had been prevented from doing this in the past month due to the court petition, which was based on allegations that the MP had bribed voters during 2017’s troubled and violent election.

This article has been republished as part of the content sharing agreement between Radio New Zealand and the AUT Pacific Media Centre.

• More Papua New Guinea stories

The 6.9-magnitude earthquake that shook the Big Island on Friday and was felt as far away as Oahu was the strongest tremor in Hawai’i in 43 years, reports Hawai’i News Now.

The Friday quake happened about 12:30 pm and was centered on the south flank of Kilauea volcano, which has been erupting and spewing lava into Leilani Estates since Thursday.

Dr Charles McCreery, director of the Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre, said the quake was the largest to strike the big island of Hawai’i since November 1975, when a tremor centered 3.2 km off Kalapana Beach was measured at a magnitude 7.2.

He said the small tsunami waves did not pose any threat but underscored the importance of vigilance as the Kilauea eruptions continue.

That quake caused a local tsunami that killed two people and injured several others.

Another pair of quakes in 2006 — the largest of which was a magnitude 6.7 — were centred off the northwest coast of Hawai’i island and caused an island-wide power outage on Oahu that lasted 19 hours.

The strongest quake ever to hit Hawaii was a 7.9-magnitude. It was recorded on April 4, 1868.

This week a disaster relief team operating out of Mougulu in Western Province demonstrated how key partnerships can lead directly to efficient outcomes.

As the largest earthquake in more than 100 years rocked the centre of New Guinea in the early hours of February 26, I lay petrified in my bed, listening as things fell all through the house.

As the shock waves subsided, I flipped on my phone and checked in with my friends in Mt Hagen, Goroka, Lae. They were shaken, but ok. But we were the fortunate ones.

Days passed and every day we learned more of what had befallen the people nearer the epicentre. I knew I had to do something to help the people most affected. I contacted Mission Aviation Fellowship (MAF) and my longtime friend Sally Lloyd, a woman who not only grew up in Mougulu where her parents have served the Biami people for 50 years, but who has devoted much of her adult life to continuing that legacy and selflessly serving her people in that area.

“I want to help. Is there anything you think I can help with?” I asked. “Yes!” was the reply.

Preparing for the journey to Mougulu
By the time March 4 came around, I was in Hagen coming up to speed on the information that was coming in on the HF radio network and through the MAF pilots who were working in the affected areas southwest of the earthquake.

Following meetings with MAF and the PNG Defence Force (PNGDF) and their Australian Defence Force(ADF) counterparts on March 5, a plan was formed that Sally and I would go to Mougulu in Western Province and form part of a forward operating base to help MAF and MAF’s partners facilitate the disaster relief work.

I bought some tinfish and rice and charged up my phone.

That night, Sally told me the good news that Ok Tedi Mining Ltd (OTML) was working with the office of the MP for North Fly, James Donald, and that a helicopter and pilot would be ready to assist our work the next morning.

On March 6, we were picked up by a helicopter in Hagen and taken to Huya and Dodomona, two of the worst affected places on this side of Mt Sisa. Sally wanted to stay overnight with the people at Huya so that she could get a good sense of what was happening there.

I reckoned I could do a night with the refugees at Dodomona; after all, what’s the worst that could happen?

Earthquake strikes
Our assessment process involved meeting with the ward councillors and pastors, the village recorders and the local leaders. We did earthquake education, listened, prayed with them and asked about health problems, displaced persons, damages to houses and gardens, injured and missing persons, deaths.

By the time midnight struck, I was fast asleep, but only just.

Just in time to be lifted out of bed by a 6.7M earthquake detonating under Dodomona like a nuclear bomb.

By the time I got out of the house, part of it had fallen. The aid post which had stood for 38 years had fallen to the ground. People had minor injuries and were standing in the dark, afraid to go near the houses that they’d been sleeping in moments before.

A pile of mumu stones that I’d stood on to take a photo six hours earlier had vibrated so fiercely that the stones were now spread out all over the village. But we had it easy.

Over at Huya, Sally and the refugees huddled on the airstrip as the cliffs in the distance gave way, weakened a week earlier by the 7.5M, and huge landslides now fell, one after the other, for hours. The noise of a rushing howling wind thundered down on them.

People cried out in fear. The slopes below the airstrip fell away into the river. Cracks opened in the airstrip as the shock waves went on and on.

At dawn we surveyed the damage. We cared for those we could and arranged for medevacs for those who needed more than first aid.

Later that day we met up in Mougulu with team volunteer Samson Suale, MP James Donald, North Fly Project Officer Larry Franklin and officers from the Western Province Disaster Office and the North Fly District Disaster Office.

As a matter of high priority, even before coffee, I related my findings from Dodomona to the group. People were missing and presumed dead. Others were believed to be trapped and dying on the other side of a treacherous, mud-choked river.

We looked at each other. “Let’s go!” several of us said at once.

The clean-up begins
That was nearly three weeks ago. Every day since has been that intense, that focused, that full-on.

We found the “dead” people. They weren’t dead. We found the missing people. We conducted our community assessments in 26 locations from Tinahae in the north to Fogomaiyu in the south, carefully identifying and communicating which locations which will need ongoing aid and which will not.

We learned which people were displaced, where they were moving, and what they were fleeing.

We moved patients who needed help to the health center at Mougulu. Nearly 20 of them. We rescued a woman with cerebral palsy who had been abandoned by her community as they fled. She was alone for nearly four days before I came in the helicopter to take her back to where her community had fled.

We’ve dismantled the fallen aid post at Dodomona and rebuilt it in three days. Take what is fallen, make something useful out of it, get on with life.

Two newly graduated community health workers volunteered to treat patients there with medicines that we got out of Hagen. They’re there now, treating yaws, grille, diarrhea and so many sores.

We’ve installed water tanks at Dodomona, Adumari and Huya. We’ve helped the Rural Airstrip Agency conduct a two-day technical assessment of the fractures in the airstrip at Huya which will allow a plan to be put in place for its repair and re-opening.

We’ve given people the tools they’ll need to rebuild houses, gardens, lives. Hundreds of tools, thousands of packets of nails.

And, of course, we’ve delivered aid. Food aid. Water. Tarpaulins, tents, pots and blankets. Family hygiene kits. All donated by individuals, churches, business houses, CARE International, the North Fly MP’s Office, OTML. All of it flown by Adventist Aviation Services, MAF, Summer Institute of Linguistics (SI), and the ADF Chinooks.

This natural disaster has highlighted what many of us have known all along, that there are people living on the outer edges of Papua New Guinea. People like you and me.

People, however, who do not have soap or salt, a school or an aid post. People whose lives have been shattered by the mountain collapsing beneath them and who must now survive long enough to rebuild.

For the people gathered now at Adumari, Dodomona, Huya and Walagu, perhaps their greatest need now is that their plight is not politicised nor impeded by infighting among the aid groups.

They have a long road ahead of them as they decide whether or not to permanently abandon their damaged homes and villages, and if so, how to build new lives that are full of meaning and possibility.

Our small team here at Mougulu has shown how cooperation and transparency can achieve significant outcomes and I, for one, am proud that I was part of that.

Anton Lutz is an American missionary living in Papua New Guinea. This article was first published on Scott Waide’s blog My Land, My Country and has been republished by Asia Pacific Report with permission.

• More PNG earthquake stories

Pacific Media Centre Newsdesk

People in earthquake-affected areas of Papua New Guinea’s Highlands have asked international agencies to bypass the national government when providing relief.

The PNG Government has admitted that its response to the earthquake has been slow, hampered by damage to roads and access to funding.

In Koroba in Hela Province, local leader Stanley Hogga Piawi told the ABC’s PNG correspondent Eric Tlozek that more than two weeks after the 7.5 magnitude quake, people were still waiting for help.

LISTEN: Angry Highlanders call on relief agencies to sidestep PNG government

Continuous rain is hampering relief efforts in the earthquake-devastated regions of the Highlands, reports the PNG Post-Courier.

The wet may continue for a few more days as helicopters, the mainstay of the relief efforts, are now limited in the operation.

The National Weather Service (NWS) office has warned of a “high risk” of landslides, flooding and a slight chance of a tropical cyclone. The wet season has finally extended into the Southern and Highlands regions, the NWS said yesterday.

As Papua New Guinea experiences the wet season and unusual natural disasters, the NWS forecasting and warning centre assistant director Jimmy Gomoga is now urging people to listen to the radio stations for weather warnings updates.

Aircraft use restricted
The Australian and New Zealand defence forces said yesterday they had limited the use of their lighter aircraft due to bad weather.

The NWS said the wet season normally set in about December until late May when the dry season begins.

“According to the latest analysis from the weather office, we are in a weak La Nina phase and will mean higher rainfalls across the mainland PNG and mostly over the Southern region with high risk of flooding in the Momase, Highlands and Southern regions, high risk of landslides in the Highlands and deforested areas and 30 to 40 per cent chance of a tropical cyclone forming or passing within PNG,” Gomoga said.

He said the wet season triggered tropical cyclones so people living along coastal waters, particularly along the Solomon Sea and Coral Sea, must listen to weather warnings on the radio and take precautions.

“This weather we are experiencing will continue for the next 24 hours and may continue as the country is still in the wet season,” Gomoga said.

“The peak period has already passed and the month of April and May are the transitional periods and eventually into dry season which kicks into in the month of June.”

In the meantime, the weather office is closely monitoring the ocean currents in possibility of a tropical cyclone.

Water shortage ‘looming disaster’
While relief supplies continue to be delivered to earthquake-affected communities, a lack of water is proving to be a looming disaster, reports EMTV News.

In a briefing, Oil Search Limited managing director Peter Botten said the lack of access to clean water sources for many communities had increased the risk of sickness.

The company is now working with its partners, including state agencies, in an effort to deliver clean water to communities, to prevent the spread of water-borne diseases.

Among its relief efforts, Oil Search has deployed a dedicated medical team to reach affected communities – these teams have already noted an increase in water-borne diseases, with several medical evacuations already carried out.

Australian doctors to help
Australian Prime Minister Peter O’Neill has announced Australian doctors would come to Papua New Guinea to help medical teams in earthquake-affected areas, as fear of water-borne diseases emerge, reports The National and as also reported earlier by Asia Pacific Report.

“We know that over the next few days or weeks, most of the water-borne diseases will start affecting some of the population in the area. We have to lift our presence in medical support that we will have to extend to them,” O’Neill said.

“Dr Temu [Health Minister Sir Puka] has already cleared for the Australian doctors to come and help us…They will come and help our own medical specialists which the Health Department is putting together to dispatch to the remotest communities throughout the country.”

Sir Puka said they were mobilising a team from the Port Moresby General Hospital.
“We have formally requested the Australian government [to send doctors] because Australian doctors in emergency situations are well organised,” Sir Puka said.

“So we have asked them for assistance which will complement what we have.”

O’Neill said relief efforts were ongoing, reports The National.

Remote communities
“We are starting to reach many of the remote communities, supplying medicine, food and relief supply to the provinces affected,” he said, adding that the district development authorities in areas being allocated funding were assisting the people “which we are not able to reach”.

“Most of the members of Parliament and the district chief executive officers have been trying to mobilise the supplies and in particular medicine, and getting the injured and the sick out of the areas that have been affected,” he said.

He added that commitments, towards the government’s relief efforts so far had exceeded K100 million.

It included donations from governments – “private sector donations coming through is well over K5 million.”

• More PNG earthquake stories

Pacific Media Centre Newsdesk

West Papuans have set up their own Papua New Guinea Earthquake Appeal in solidarity with their fellow Melanesians across the border following last month’s devastating Highlands earthquake with more than 100 deaths.

On Tuesday, a candlelit vigil was held in the Papuan capital city of Jayapura, raising awareness and financial support for the people of Papua New Guinea.

In a media release, the organisers appealed “to all Papuans from all walks of life to participate in solidarity with our Melanesian brothers in Papua New Guinea who are stricken by the disaster”.

This message came from Benny Wenda, chairman of the United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP), which initiated the appeal:

Dear friends,

Following my message of condolence earlier this month after the devastating earthquake in Papua New Guinea, the situation has tragically further deteriorated and now over 100 people have died and over 300,000 people have been left without shelter.

In response to this, we the people of West Papua are standing shoulder to shoulder with our wantoks and brothers and sisters across the border in Papua New Guinea in an act of Melanesian solidarity from Sorong to Samarai. Fundraising is taking place across West Papua and a 100 candle vigil will be held in support of the people of Papua New Guinea.

As fellow Melanesians, we the people of West Papua especially feel the pain and suffering of our people on the other side of the border but as fellow human beings we can all feel such pain and we all know that it is right to support people in need. Therefore, I am urging everyone around the world to please help support the ULMWP’s PNG Earthquake Appeal and in doing so, support the people of Papua New Guinea in their time of need.

Please do donate generously here to the ULMWP’s PNG Earthquake Appeal fund, the bank details of which can be found below:

SWIFT Code: BOSPPGPM
BSB Number: 088943 ,
Account Name: Peter Yossi Kovempa
Acc No :007008699618
BSP Bank, Boroko Branch Port Moresby

All proceeds will go directly to the people of Papua New Guinea in their earthquake relief effort. The people of Papua New Guinea have consistently stood by their brothers and sisters in West Papua during our suffering and struggle for self-determination. It is only right that we stand by them in their time of need too, and we urge people around the world to do the same.

Thank you very much.

This cohort, formed in the 1960s and dubbed by the researcher as the “Transnational Nuclear Assemblage”, includes government and business institutions that produce ruling texts on radiation protection that determine safe levels.

A core idea was that of narrative and approach to issues, especially relating to different “realities”, said Karly Burch, a doctoral candidate at the University of Otago who was speaking at a public seminar hosted by AUT’s Pacific Media Centre.

The seminar focused on the governance of “safe food” after the Tokyo Electric Power Company’s (TEPCO) Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant explosions in the wake of the 9.1 magnitude Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami on 11 March 2011.

“Multiple realities are possible, but sometimes the ruling elite wants to enact a certain reality and we are convinced there is only one way to do things but in fact there may be many.”

The anniversary of the disaster was last Sunday.

Burch moved to Japan in 2008 and lived in the Kansai region. After two years, she moved to Europe to do her masters degree research in agroecology. At the time of the disaster, she was in Austria and she returned to Japan.

Radiation discourse
Her research “questions how the Japanese government and agricultural industry encourage people to eat food that possibly contain TEPCO’s radionuclides, and how this works”.

Radionuclides are unstable isotopes that release particles to reach a more stable state, Burch said.

Ionising radiation is the most concerning radiation as it can damage cells. These radionuclides cannot be sensed by humans and radiation machines are required to identify objects or food with radionuclides.

When thinking about institutional ethnography and tracing ruling discourses, Burch began to consider how the ruling discourses and the language used to discuss radiation emerged.

She also took into account how discussion around safe food is “contained” within these ruling discourses, and “how do we all participate within that containment”.

Burch used institutional ethnography as a way to trace how discourse, documents or media link everyday people to this attempt to rule and coordinate the way people consume and think about food safety.

Burch also borrowed theory relating to material semiotics from science and technology studies.

‘Untouchable’
She said that while science has been considered almost “God-like and untouchable” in the past, material semiotics considers how all types of objects, both human and non-human, are used and involved in scientific research.

“It’s not a controllable system, there’s human and non-human actors relating with each other,” Burch explained.

“The discovery of xrays and radioactivity dates back to the 1890s,” Burch said.

The International Committee on Radiation Units and Measurements was formed as a response to the damage radiation was causing, with people beginning to suffer injuries or even dying due to exposure to radioactivity, Burch said.

“Scientists were looking at ways to discuss radioactivity with each other. They needed to have shared units and measurements.”

Jim Marbrook, a documentary maker and AUT lecturer in screen studio production, attended the seminar.

Marbrook has twice been to Japan researching a film he is working on, and found the seminar interesting.

“I thought it was a really interesting topic to research,” said Marbrook. “It was particularly interesting how she analysed the discourse of protection agencies…and compared that to the dialogue that was going on between the people who had to evacuate.”

Jean Bell is contributing editor of the Pacific Media Centre’s Pacific Media Watch project.

• The Fukushima seminar

Pacific Media Centre Newsdesk

Australian medical doctors will be at earthquake-affected areas soon to give medical aid and complement the local medical efforts to people who need medical help, the Post-Courier reports.

Prime Minister Peter O’Neill made the announcement yesterday, saying that paperwork was underway currently to fly them in.

Health Minister Sir Puka Temu said the government had asked Canberra for its doctors who were well organised in emergency situations.

“As soon as a clearance from the Medical Board is finalised, these doctors will be brought into the country,” he added.

Parliament is expected to sit this month to pass emergency legislation that allows for the establishment of a restoration authority for the earthquake affected areas, reports EMTV News.

The restoration authority will also govern the spending of funds allocated for the immediate and long-term rebuilding of the Hela, Southern Highlands and Western provinces.

The government may also consider a short-term budget strategy to deal with revenue shortfalls caused by the quake.

According to a United Nations report published on Reliefweb, 544,000 people have been affected in the PNG earthquake and 270,000 are still in need of immediate humanitarian assistance.

There is an urgent need for medicine, shelter, food and water. People are terrified, sleeping in the open.

Also, 26,000 people have been displaced in Western Province.

• More PNG earthquake stories

Papua New Guinea’s Highlands earthquake disaster has brought to light some of the many things that need to be considered in assisting those affected by disaster and restoring vital infrastructures and communication links between relief agencies and the people.

The response to the 7.5 magnitude earthquake on February 26 took almost a week for the National Disaster Centre to find out statistics of people who were affected, casualties, homes and food gardens destroyed and how to deliver relief supplies to those affected.

While a small team of medical officers in Hela and Southern Highlands provinces have been hard at work trying to reach and assist the affected communities, more deaths and injuries were reported from areas unreachable by road and telecommunications.

READ MORE: PNG quake – an invisible disaster which could change life forever

These are some of the impediments to getting accurate statistic:

• Most communities do not have schools, clinics and ward offices that will keep the records of people in their wards or communities.
• No road links to almost all the areas affected. The rugged terrain also makes it difficult for roads to be constructed and maintained.
• No telecommunication reception, or television and radio signals by which the people can be advised and educated on the disasters and how to avoid destruction.

At Timu village in Komo-Magarima, Hela province, 11 people were were killed by landslips caused by the earthquake.

Four out of the 11 bodies were recovered while the other seven bodies are still buried under the debris.

Timu village is just a few tens of kilometres away from the provincial capital Tari but it is way back in terms of basic services available for the people.

No benefits from gas pipeline
The people knew that there is a gas pipeline running through their neighbouring villages from Hides to the Papuan coastline but they have not seen the benefits from the gas and petroleum extraction in the province.

Teams of researchers and volunteers from relief agencies were tasked to collect data, informations and statistics of people who have been affected, but they can only be flown by helicopter into the affected areas.

There are no medivac helicopters to transport relief supplies and doctors into the affected communities.

The PNG Defence Force, Missionary Aviation Fellowship (MAF) and Adventist Aviation Services were kind enough to do trips into these remote communities.

The cost of hiring a helicopter in PNG is quite expensive. Helicopter companies are charging around K5000 (about NZ2200) an hour. With most communities being isolated in the remote areas, it is costly and ineffective to attend to more than five villages in a day.

The Australian Defence Force Hercules aircraft transporting relief supplies from Port Moresby, Lae and Mt Hagen has been landing at Moro airport, then smaller aircraft bring the supplies back to Tari and offload onto helicopters to distribute.

Disaster response in PNG has been very slow and hasn’t improved from previous experiences.

Volcano displaced islanders
In February 2018, I was in Wewak when a volcanic island began releasing smoke after being dormant for more than two centuries. The Kadovar Island volcano has displaced more than 600 islanders who are now seeking refuge at a temporary care centre supported by aid agencies.

Again the experiences from the Manam volcano in Madang hasn’t helped the authorities to sort out a permanent resettlement area for the displaced islanders. Slow response from the National Disaster Centre has caused greater loss for the people in the last three years.

They’ve lost their culture and they have lost their way of life on Manam island while living at the care centre at Bogia.

The National Disaster team should be the first people on ground after the disaster strikes.

They must be the first to make contact with the affected people, not turning up a week later only to find out that people died while waiting to receive treatment.

I hope the present disaster will provide an insight into issues that need to be addressed by the Papua New Guinea government to ensure the National Disaster Centre is adequately and constantly funded to serve its purpose.

Sylvester Gawi is a National Broadcasting Corporation (NBC) journalist who blogs independently at Graun Blong Mi – My Land.

• More PNG earthquake stories

Survivors in Papua New Guinea’s earthquake in the Highlands face tough challenges. And so do the relief agencies and government authorities trying to deliver support to them.

Many of the worst affected areas in Hela and the Southern Highlands provinces are in isolated spots.

The people don’t live in large villages that you see on the coast. They live in small hamlets of 5-10 houses spread out over a plateaus or valleys.

They have no road access.

Many have to walk for hours to get within line of site of a mobile telecommunications tower in order to send a text message. Data signals are too weak and problematic.

For other locations, it takes more than a day.

Some of the villages are relatively close to the LNG site. But it looks deceptively close on a map.

Difficult to reach
What you’re dealing with on the ground are terrains that are extremely difficult to reach – even within a day’s walk. That is precisely why helicopters are vital in this disaster.

In some villages, people have had to build helipads on mountainsides to allow for medical teams to land safely.

Chopper pilot Eric Aliawi, who took an EMTV crew to one of the locations, had to land on three logs that had been placed on a spot dug out on a mountain side because the helipad had not been completed.

Even after landing, the crew and the doctors had to walk for about half an hour to get to the village.

A few commentators have said that the people affected are subsistence farmers and that they still have food to eat because they plant crops.

The reality is that their gardens have been destroyed and it is dangerous for them to go into the foothills and the valleys, or mountainsides, because of the ongoing aftershocks.

Trauma of death
They are also dealing with the trauma of the death and destruction that happened in their villages. They will have to adjust to normal life as time goes by.

Their houses have been destroyed and they have moved from the locations of their hamlets to central locations like schools, airstrips and mission stations to seek help.

Congregating in large numbers in one location is unusual for them. Losing their independence and relying on someone to give them food is also not something they are accustomed to.

They need is help to get back on their feet and resume their way of life.

They need the following:
Good quality tarpaulins for shelter – They live in a high rainfall area. The temperature drops rapidly at night and without shelter, young children and older people will get sick.

Food – With limited access to their gardens, food is a priority for them.

Water – Their water sources have been polluted. They need large water containers, tanks and clean water (as an immediate need).

Cooking pots – This is important if they are to boil drinking water.

Warm clothes + blankets – Sweaters, hoodies and simple blankets will help a lot to ease their burden. It is not as important as the others mentioned, but it will help.

Children’s clothing – also not an immediate priority but it will help a lot.

6 to 15cm nails and tools – in order to rebuild their houses, they need nails and tools like bush knives, axes and hammers. It is very difficult to obtain items like this where they are.

Disposable delivery trays, disposable suture trays – during the earthquake, sterilisation equipment at the Tari Hospital was damaged. The doctors need this to send to aid posts so that health workers can handle deliveries and other treatment.

The government contacts are:

Thomas Eluh – PA for Southern Highlands

Joseph Bando – PA Hela Province

Dr Tana Kiak – Tari Hospital

Inbox Scott Waide on Facebook for contact details, or text him on +675 70300459. Or email scott.waide@gmail.com for information. This article was first posted on Scott Waide’s blog, My Land, My Country.

• More PNG earthquake reports

At this stage, the outcome is still uncertain after the devastation and loss of life – now more than 100 – of Papua New Guinea’s Highlands earthquake.

Obviously the biggest concern remains the human impact of the earthquake – reaching the victims and providing emergency relief.

Many households and communities have no drinking water and food gardens have been destroyed.

There must be thorough mapping of the affected areas to ensure that no affected communities remain isolated or without support or relief where in need.

Also, all the landslides need to be checked, not only where they block roads, or have destroyed food gardens or houses, but also where they’ve blocked streams and rivers.

This could result in future floods or surge damage downstream when the dam is breached in future.

Economically, the earthquake has damaged food crops and cash crops, and local trade – the disruption to access roads, highways and bridges, and damage to stores and other businesses and infrastructure, including telecommunications towers, power plants and power lines.

Costing tens of millions of kina
Repairs will costs tens of millions of kina, with the government unfortunately only budgeting each year a fraction of what’s needed for infrastructure maintenance, let alone for emergency repairs and restoration.

From past experience, such as after Cyclone Guba in 2007, repairs of core bridges and infrastructure can take many years, although the presence of major resource companies, partially needing some of that infrastructure, and with their organisational and plant capacity, it can be expected that at least some of that infrastructure will be restored more promptly.

Although most of the businesses and households would have been uninsured against earthquake damage, the restoration process will generate some valuable local economic activity for the disaster-affected communities, in terms of jobs and business activity in the building and construction industry.

In terms of the larger economic impact, the major 7.5/6 earthquake of February 26 and the series of ensuing aftershocks and associated quakes, have halted or impacted several of the country’s largest businesses, notably in the extractive industries.

For example, Kutubu oil production (and associated fields), PNG LNG gas production, Ok Tedi Mine in Western and Porgera mine – notably its power generation and reticulation from Hides.

It is too early to say how major the impact is or how long the delay will be to production and exports from each of these major resource projects.

The respective operating companies are still in the process of their assessments of the core resources, wells and accessible reserves, surface and underground mine sites etc, processing/conditioning plants, power plants, pipelines, as well as transport and communications.

Epicentre near the Hela border
Clearly, the greatest damage was experienced nearest the epicentre to the main quake – near the Hela/Western Province border, including the major Komo airfield.

Extensive damage to staff quarters and other company facilities was sustained.

But that can be restored fairly promptly, compared with damage to costly and fundamental plant that may have been sustained.

One would expect some projects to be able to resume production and exports relatively soon, and some may have barely interrupted operations, for example with Porgera using a partial back-up power supply.

Although damage has been sustained by Ok Tedi and Porgera, they are likely to be able to resume full operations more readily after repairs.

The oil, but particularly LNG and condensate plants, and wells etc, may well require more extensive and costly repairs, potentially keeping some of these operations out of production for significantly longer.

ExxonMobil has declared force-majeure, enabling them to avoid their contractual supply contracts as a result of forces beyond their control.

Exports will halt
A few LNG initial shipments can presumably proceed from LNG stored in tanks in the facility near Port Moresby. But beyond a week or so, production and exports would presumably halt.

Papua New Guinea had about K25 billion worth of overall exports in 2016, of which around K20 billion was from minerals, oil and gas.

If K11 billion was oil and gas, and production was halted for say two months, that would comprise a loss of near K2 billion of exports.

If a major portion of mineral production was halted by one month, that could be up to another K0.5 billion of exports lost, or rather deferred.

Oil, gas and most mineral prices are largely significantly above the levels in 2016. So in 2018, the loss of exports earnings would be higher than the figures stated here.

The LNG is not currently contributing to foreign exchange receipts but the mineral and oil exports largely are. So it would significantly reduce needed forex receipts.

Although company tax revenue was well below K100 million from the mining/oil/gas sector in 2017, it was expected that this figure would have been up (to K89.5 million, still a very low figure, considering the level of exports), particularly coming from Ok Tedi and Porgera.

Cut back in tax receipts
These tax receipts would be cut back if production was significantly halted, and the companies have to reinvest heavily in major repairs and new plant.

Dividends have been received, however, from the state’s equity in PNG LNG, and oil and mining operations, which would also take a cut, if production was heavily reduced, and major expenditure incurred, which seems inevitable at this stage, all adding to
the already very tight fiscal situation the government faces this year.

With major expenditure required by the government as its contribution to restoration of infrastructure and services in the affected areas (K450 million has been committed, although it is not known the basis of this number of the source of the allocation) then that clearly adds further to the fiscal pressure.

Shirley Mauludu is a journalist with The National daily newspaper. The article has been republished under Creative Commons.

• PNG earthquake – Day 10 with more than 100 deaths
• More PNG earthquake stories
• PNG earthquake appeal

Pacific Media Centre Newsdesk

The Papua New Guinea Defence Force has deployed 70 soldiers from Port Moresby to Southern Highlands and Hela provinces in the aftermath of last wek’s 7.5 magnitude earthquake.

They are tasked to provide security, medical assistance, distribute relief supplies and set up care centres for communities affected by the earthquake and aftershocks, reports EMTV News.

International news agencies are reporting that the death toll has now topped 100.

The troops will also be engaged in other necessary duties if needed.

Half of the group will travel to Hela from Komo Airport while the other half will be travelling by road to Southern Highlands from Mt Hagen, Western Highlands.

The troops are from the First Royal Pacific Island Regiment at Taurama.

Among them, 10 are specialist combat military trained medical personnel, of which five are deployed to Hela and the other five deployed to Southern Highlands.

They were flown by the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) C-130 from the PNGDF Air Transport Wing at Jacksons International Airport.

EMTV News stories are republished Asia Pacific Report by arrangement.

• More PNG earthquake stories

Thousands of people have been displaced and are still waiting for relief assistance in disaster affected areas in Hela and Southern Highlands provinces a week after the 7.5 magnitude earthquake destroyed their homes and food gardens in Papua New Guinea.

Aftershocks below 5 magnitude have been experienced in the last 7 days with locals on high alert and awaiting relief supplies and assistance in evacuations to safer grounds.

Hela Provincial Hospital in Tari confirmed a total of 38 deaths and 8 unconfirmed deaths yesterday afternoon. A medical team was deployed into Limu and Homapawa villages in the Benere ward area where a a total of 21 deaths were confirmed.

Homapawa village confirmed 10 deaths and Timu 11. Of the 11 in Timu, 4 have been retrieved and given proper burial while another 7 (a family of six and another teenage girl) are still buried under the debris along with their house.

Efforts by locals to retrieve their bodies are slowly progressing at this stage.

Timu villagers who have lost all their houses and food gardens are now taking refuge at their local EBC Church building in the village.

Another 12 confirmed deaths have been reported at the Mt Bosavi area in the Komo-Magarima district of Hela. Nearby Mananda village also reported 5 confirmed deaths and houses and food gardens destroyed by the disaster.

More deaths reported
Health officials are yet to verify uncomfirmed reports of some more deaths in Magarima and Pandoka.

So far Hela province has reported a total of 38 confirmed deaths while Southern Highlands has reported 37 deaths so far. This now brings the death toll to 75 as at yesterday afternoon.

Affected communities are facing severe food, clothing and fresh water shortages as relief efforts are slowly progressing at this stage. Most of these villages in Hela are situated along the pipelines areas of the oil and gas plants in Southern Highlands and Hela provinces.

Humanitarian relief agencies are also doing their best to get into affected communities which most communities are inaccessible by road or the road links cut off by the disaster.

Oil Search Limited has committed K6 million in cash and kind towards the disaster while EXXON Mobil has committed K3 million towards relief assistance.

Oil Search has already began distributing relief supplies to parts of Southern Highlands while relief supplies were also delivered by the Australian Defence Force Hercules aircraft to Moro in Hela.

The National Disaster Centre in a statement released yesterday said it was still waiting for accurate data to reach it so that it could act.

However, people from the affected communities have pleaded for the government to fast track relief assistance and also address resettlement issues as they were still in fear following aftershocks over the past week.

Journalist Sylvester Gari blogs at Graun Blong Mi-My Land where this article was first published.

• More PNG earthquake stories

Local community leaders have taken charge of care centres in the Southern Highlands province of Papua New Guinea as they await food, clothing and other relief supplies to be delivered.

Acting Southern Highlands Provincial Administrator Thomas Eluh said six care centres had been set up around SHP by locals.

The death toll yesterday stood at 37 while there have been 25 unconfirmed deaths reported. Sixteen deaths have been reported in Hela.

Road links into most of the affected villages have been blocked by debris from landslips piling up. Some sections of the roads were badly damaged by the movement from the earthquake.

Police from the Mobile Squad based in Mendi have been grounded in the last 24hours after their fuel supply tanks were also damaged by the earthquake.

Most shops and fuel stations have been reportedly closed following damages from Monday’s earthquake and the aftershocks that are constant in the province.

The Agiru Centre which houses the provincial administration has also reported damages to its offices and equipment and has been condemned by authorities. The provincial administrator and the disaster team are now operating out of the provincial police command in Mendi.

Nursing school destroyed
The Mendi School of Nursing was one of the institutions I have visited that has most of its buildings destroyed by the earthquake.

There is now a greater need for funding to be made available through the National Disaster Office so that logistical support can be provided to distribute relief supplies.

In Hela, a total of 16 deaths have been confirmed by the Hela Provincial Hospital in Tari. More causalties are expected to be reported in the coming days as volunteers are dispatched to gather reports.

Tari-Pori MP and Finance Minister James Marape said about 40 percent of Papua New Guinea’s revenue would be affected if the Hides operations was shut down.

Minister Marape said the government is confident that this would not really affect the budgetary allocation for 2018.

Hela’s political leaders also joined Minister Marape and Governor Philip Undialu to show solidarity and support towards addressing the plight of their people affected.

The provincial disaster response team in Hela is also working together to address the situation.

Funding allocations
The National Government has committed K450 million towards the disaster. The disaster committee has made allocations for the initial K100:

• K40 million will be spent to fix the road infrastructures damaged by the earthquake so that affected areas are accessible for relief supplies to be delivered.
• K10 million to assist schools and education institutions buildings damaged by the disaster and another K10 million for health services.
• K23 million has been set aside for transport, logistical support and other areas to provide relief assistance.

The remaining K350 million will also be spent on the same purposes once assessment reports of the extent of the damages are confirmed and brought to the disaster team’s attention.

In a statement released yesterday, Oil Search has committed K6 million in donations in cash and kind in disaster relief efforts to both Hela and SHP.

The Australian government has begun to fly its supplies to Moro on its Australian Defence Force Hercules plane loaded with relief supplies.

New Zealand’s donations will arrive today.

Sylvester Gawi is a Papua New Guinea journalist who blogs at Graun Blong Mi- My Land where this article was first published. It has been republished by Asia Pacific Report with permission.

• Other PNG earthquake reports

While the multibillion dollar mammoth petroleum company Exxon declared “force majeur” and another counted its financial losses, one family from Magarima in the Southern Highlands was this weekend mourning the devastating loss of their last born son and his young family.

Twenty-one-year-old Jack Wapol Mawe had already run out of the house he and is family had been sleeping in that night.

But then when he went back into the small building to pull out his wife and baby, the landslip buried them in the house.

“We found him frozen in motion… his hands reaching out to his young wife and first born son when they were all buried,” said Fr Pius Hal the Catholic priest at the Mendi Diocese and an uncle to Jack Mawe.

Jack had recently married Regina. They were transiting through Mendi with their son when the earthquake struck and killed all three of them.

Yesterday, doctors at the Mendi Hospital completed the post mortem and today, the family was taken by road to Magarima where they are from.

“I had not seen him for a long while. I think he was feeling a bit shy of talking to me because he had married quite early. He would have been about 20 or 21. His wife would have been about the same age.

“They had come from Hagen. It was the first time I had seen him in many years. That night he was gone.”

Circle of rocks memorial
At the site of the landslip in the centre of Mendi town behind the local CLC church, a small circle of rocks with a short wooden stake in the middle marks the place of death.

“They’re gone,” says a relative. “We’re looking after the place.”

Much of the house is still buried. The hauskrai is deserted. Three young lives were cut short just as they begun their journey together as a family.

In distant Komo, several hours from Mendi town, the roads are cut off. From the air, it looks like it’s been cut to shreds by giant claws that ripped the ground open.

An Indian priest who travelled in from Tari today, said his parishioners told him at least 14 people have died. Some of the areas are too far to reach and too difficult without road access.

Help is coming, the government says. A state of emergency has been declared and K450 million allocated.

The Australian government, MAF and Oil Search are on the ground in the three provinces of hela, Southern Highlands and Western Highlands but it will take weeks before everyone who needs it receives it.

Scott Waide, a Lae-based senior journalist for EMTV News, blogs at My Land, My Country, where this article was first published. He also posted a short update on The Pacific Newsroom today saying the Acting Administrator for Southern Highlands, Thomas Eluh, had confirmed that 37 deaths had been reported with 25 more unaccounted for so far. He appealed for more aid.

• Exxon declares force majeure on PNG exports after quake

By Gorethy Kenneth in Port Moresby

The Papua New Guinea government has declared an immediate state-of-emergency for the earthquake-devastated provinces of Hela, Southern Highlands, Western and Enga provinces.

Cabinet met yesterday and also set aside K450 million for relief and service restoration operations.

Prime Minister O’Neill also announced yesterday that cabinet had approved the establishment of a restoration authority that would manage long-term reconstruction efforts during a four-year period to fully restore normalcy.

O’Neill said that an emergency session of Parliament would be called soon to approve the legislation setting up the restoration authority.

He said K100 million would be released immediately and the remaining K300 million spread over a long term arrangement.

A committee assisted by the Works Department under an emergency disaster restoration team, led by Dr William Hamlin, as the emergency controller would be announced today.

Dr Hamlin and team would manage and co-ordinate all restoration activities working with provincial authorities.

Unprecedented disaster
O’Neill said that this was an unprecedented disaster in the Highlands region with an appropriate response underway by the National Government.

He said while all these decisions were being made, relief efforts were already underway, and further assessments provided to focus operations to areas in need.

“A state-of-emergency has been declared to expedite the restoration of essential public services including healthcare services, schools, road access, airports, power and communications facilities,” O’Neill said.

“An emergency session of Parliament will be convened for the presentation of legislation that will establish the restoration authority, with the date of the session to be announced by the Speaker of Parliament.

“Members of the PNG Defence Force and disaster officers were dispatched to the affected areas immediately following the earthquake, and are working with provincial authorities, particularly with the governors of Hela and Southern Highlands provinces.

“Essential government departments are already delivering relief, and we are further working with partners in the international community to utilise specialist relief capabilities to reach our people and communities affected by the earthquake.”

Gorethy Kenneth is a senior PNG Post-Courier journalist.

• More PNG earthquake stories

By Scott Waide of EMTV News

Our biggest challenge as Papua New Guinean journalists has been verifying the statistics from rural areas with limited resources. As much as possible, I’ve tried to talk to a victim of the earthquake or someone close to a victim.

Over the last 24 hours, it has been more of a “hit-and-miss” situation. People have been sending me text messages at 2am in the morning when they are in a mobile coverage area.

Then they have have to go back to their villages or deal with the ongoing tremors. Getting in touch has been difficult.

READ MORE: Earthquake disaster death toll stands at 31

So far, the current death toll from Monday’s 7.5 magnitude earthquake stands at 31.

The three separate sources in Southern Highlands, Hela and Western Provinces have also said the number of those injured and missing remain uncertain at this stage.

I note that overseas media is quoting a figure of 300. Truth is, we don’t really know.

Village deaths
With the help of Milton Kwaipo, I was able to get a recorded interview of Firmin Tiki, from Pureni village, Hela province who confirmed six deaths in his village alone.

Several of those injured by the quake have been take to Tari hospital for treatment. Again, we don’t know how many have been injured.

“Six people died. I don’t know how many injured. But there are many.”

Tiki, a rice farmer at a National Agriculture Research Institute (NARI), had just returned to his village when the quake struck early Monday.

“All our houses, our gardens have been destroyed. I don’t know about other places but we were hit hard,” he said.

It has been difficult getting in tough with Tari hospital.

Although I note the doctors have been working under difficult conditions to get through their surgeries using mobile phones torches.

13 people buried
Across the Strickland River in villages near the epicentre on the Hela-Western border, a community Health Worker, Paul Isilawa, confirmed that 13 people were buried on Monday.

They belong to the Edolo tribe whose hamlets are located in an area difficult to get to.

Sally Lloyd who grew up in the Western Province said nine of those who died are from Fau and four are from Aiya. Both villages are within Hela Provincial boundary. The reports were sent from the Mogulu Mission Station in Western Province by two-way radio.

In Mendi, Catholic Priest Fr. Pius Hal, said that 11 people including four children are confirmed dead. Two of the children belong to a local level government president. One family is still buried under a landslip.

“I am at the site where the family is buried. There is a lot of uncertainly about whether help will come. People are traumatised and they need to be comforted.

“The family who is buried are my relatives. They had just returned from Hagen the day before,” he said.

Many thanks
A great many thanks to the families of those on the ground. Thank you also to the police who were kind enough to provide verification and direction.

My gratitude also goes to the many “citizen journalists” who provided contacts, independent reports, pictures, audio recordings and videos of the destruction. There are too many people to name.

Mobile phone towers destroyed by the quake are slowly being repaired. So far, other information coming from far flung areas has remained unverified. The death toll is expected to rise as new information becomes available.

We still have a lot of work to do.

Scott Waide is the Lae bureau chief of EMTV News and began his career with EMTV in 1997 as a news and sports reporter and anchor. He and has been a media professional for more than 19 years. This article is from his personal blog My Land, My Country.

• More PNG articles

By Johnny Poiya in Mendi

Fourteen people have been killed in Papua New Guinea’s Southern Highlands and Hela Provinces by the powerful earthquake and aftershocks that hit early Monday morning.

This figure is down from an estimated more than 30 deaths reported by the Post-Courier yesterday.

Acting Hela police commander Thomas Levongo said nine people were reported killed in Hela while sources in Mendi claimed five killed.

All were killed reportedly when they were sleeping by their falling houses.

Landslips and sinkholes in many parts of the two provinces had created unprecedented catastrophies, ammounting to millions of kina in repair costs.

Several sections of the highway were blocked by landslips and sinkholes while structural damages included cracks on the road surfaces.

The earthquake which struck around quarter to four caused whole mountain sides to fall off, rumbling towards villages below, sending unsuspecting sleeping locals to wakeup and flee for their lives.

The quake caused massive destruction right across the two provinces with the most notable areas near the Highlands Highway in villages of Assisi in Imbongu, Nipa, Poroma, Tari and Komo-Margarima districts.

Heavy trembling from aftershocks continued sparodically in the two provinces throughout the day and night on Monday and yesterday.

A whole section of the Tubiri limestone near Mendi town, made famous by local artist Agustine Emil in his song “TLS”, broke off and rumbled down to the Mendi River.

The earthquake which is alleged to be the biggest in the region, caused communication and power blackouts in Hela and Southern Highlands on Monday and yesterday.

The massive earthquake toppled a very large number of houses, fences, walls, power pylons and trees.

Johnny Poiya is a PNG Post-Courier reporter.

• Earlier PNG earthquake report