Loading player
This video will automatically play after a 5 second delay.
Loading player
This video will automatically play after a 5 second delay.
Play video 
Play video 
Play video 
Play video Quake and tsunami warning
An earthquake near Vanuatu triggers a tsunami warning in the Pacific.
Three powerful earthquakes have rocked the South Pacific near the Vanuatu archipelago, generating a small tsunami just over a week after another massive wave killed 178 people in the Samoas and Tonga.
There were no immediate reports of damage and all tsunami warnings and watches for the Pacific were cancelled two hours after they were first issued.
The Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre said sea-level readings indicated a tiny tsunami formed after a 7.8-magnitude quake struck 294 kilometres north-west of the Vanuatu island of Espiritu Santo, and 596 kilometres north-west of the capital of Port Vila, at a depth of 35 kilometres.
View October 8 Pacific quakes in a larger map
Fifteen minutes later, a second quake with a magnitude of 7.3 hit at the same depth but 35 kilometres further north of Espiritu Santo and Port Vila.
A third 7.1-magnitude quake was recorded nearly an hour later, 280 kilometres north-west of the Espiritu Santo islands at a depth of 15 kilometres.
The trio of earthquakes followed a 6.7-magnitude quake that struck south of the Philippines this morning.
The Hawaii-based warning centre immediately issued a regional tsunami warning for 11 nations and territories and a lower-level tsunami watch as far away as Australia and Hawaii. All warnings were cancelled two hours later.
There were no immediate reports of injury or damage from officials in Vanuatu, a chain of 83 islands. It lies just over 2200 kilometres north-east of Sydney.
Scramble for higher ground
People rushed for higher ground after the tsunami warning.
Jodi Walles, manager of the Aore Hotel in Vanuatu’s northern region, said she felt "a rolling in the ground" when the earthquakes hit.
Shops on the island were closed and locals evacuated to higher ground in as a precaution against a tsunami.
In Vanuatu’s capital, a group of Australians was among guests being evacuated from the Port Vila Resort and Casino.
In the Solomons capital of Honiara, Linda Joel described hectic scenes in which "a lot people are worried and they are running around everywhere" looking for relatives.
The booked-out Honiara hotel where Ms Joel worked has been besieged all morning with phone calls from overseas in the wake of the tsunami warning.
"A lot of people from overseas ring for their wives or their husbands in the hotel asking are we okay or if the tsunami has hit us. I tell them we are okay," she told The Age.
'A long and lazy quake'
New Zealand consular officer Shane Coleman told NZPA the tremors had not seemed to cause any damage but "the events in Samoa have taken the complacency out of people".
"It was a long and lazy quake," he said from the High Commission in Vanuatu.
New Zealand Ministry of Defence spokesman Vince Cholewa told NZPA all emergency services were on standby.
"We’re advising people to not be on beaches or in the immediate vicinity of the coast and to not be in boats near the coast," Mr Cholewa said.
New Caledonia evacuated schools and ordered people away from the coast.
In Fiji, many offices and schools near the coast were closed and hotels were advised to take tourists to higher ground. In the capital, Suva, police and soldiers were stopping people from going into the central city area.
In Tuvalu, a low-lying nation of eight coral atolls with about 10,000 people, thousands fled inland, some clustering around the government building in the capital, Funafuti - the only multi-storey building in the country.
The central business district in Papua New Guinea’s capital Port Moresby was evacuated amid fears a tsunami might strike.
"There was panic on the streets," Kila Kila, a Deloitte tower worker, said.
"Everybody was running around, running for buses. Next door the bank staff evacuated their building and people were streaming out of other offices.
"Over the building intercom, management told people to remain calm but to leave the building.
"About five minutes later they then said over the speakers the warning had been cancelled but everyone had already gone and they don’t look like returning to work today."
Erakor Island Resort general manager Joy Wu said guests had not yet returned to their accommodation for fear the tsunami warning cancellation could be wrong.
"Tsunamis can sneak up on you, so the guests haven’t returned yet," she said.
Asked why she hadn’t evacuated the resort with her guests, Ms Wu said: "I’m worried about the coffee machine and my cat. Who will look safely after them if I don’t?".
Locals unaware of alert: Australian
An Australian tourist on her honeymoon in Vanuatu says locals were completely unaware of the tsunami alert.
Leia from Bendigo in central Victoria, told ABC Radio that she only found out about warning after her brother in Australia called her.
"The tour guide looked at me very strangely and with broken English was like: ‘What do you mean?’ And I said: ‘Don’t you have tsunami warnings?’ and he said ‘No. We’ve never had to do this before’."
The Vanuatu tour guide then called the local weather station and Leia spoke with the centre and discovered they also had "no idea" about any tsunami threat.
"It was very frightening to have the locals not aware of what was going on," she said.
She said only those who had a radio with them would have known about the warning.
Quakes follow similar events
The latest warning comes just 10 days after a quake of magnitude 8.3 rocked the South Pacific near Samoa, sparking tsunami waves that killed at least 178 people and devastated coastal villages in Samoa, American Samoa and in northern Tonga.
The alerts today created worry in American Samoa, where at least 32 people were killed and hundreds of homes destroyed in the September 29 tsunami.
One day later a series of shocks, the largest measuring 7.6 on the Richter scale, struck the western region of Sumatra in Indonesia killing more than 600 people with hundreds still missing.
Printer-friendly version