According to them, five people have died, but the toll may be “higher”, said East Sepik provincial police chief Christopher Tamari.
The governor of the province, Alan Baird, spoke of “about 1,000 homes lost”, adding that rescue services were still “gauging the effects” of the earthquakes which “caused damage” to almost the entire province.
Dozens of villages located on the banks of the Sepik River had been affected by severe flooding before the earthquake struck early yesterday morning.
Photos taken after the earthquake show wooden houses giving way under the mud, which has reached about half a meter.
Earthquakes are common in Papua New Guinea, which sits at the top of the seismic “Ring of Fire,” an arc of major tectonic activity that stretches across southeast Asia and into the Pacific Ocean basin.
Although they rarely cause significant damage to the sparsely populated jungle plateaus, earthquakes can trigger devastating landslides.
The majority of the island nation’s nine million people live outside major cities, where the topography and lack of paved roads can greatly hamper search and rescue efforts.
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