updated11. September 2022, 08:42
Papua New GuineaStrong earthquake tears up roads – one fatality and countless injuries
Roads are torn up, cars and houses damaged: An earthquake measuring 7.6 on the Richter scale shook the island state of Papua New Guinea.
The epicenter of the earthquake was in the northeast of the country.
earthquake.usgs.gov
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The earth trembled on the Pacific Ring of Fire.
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An earthquake measuring 7.6 on the Richter scale was measured in Papua New Guinea on Sunday night.
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Nothing is known about victims yet.
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The majority of all earthquakes occur on the Pacific Ring of Fire.
The Pacific island nation of Papua New Guinea was hit by a strong earthquake on Sunday night. The US earthquake monitor USGS put the magnitude at 7.6. The epicenter was 65 kilometers from Lae, the country’s second largest city on the north coast with around 150,000 inhabitants.
According to MP Kessy Sawang, a mudslide buried and killed a man in the remote mountain village of Matoko. Other residents were flown to hospitals with serious injuries. There is “considerable damage” and buried people. Further injuries and deaths in towns in the Finisterre Mountains in the north of the country and in coastal regions are to be feared.
Videos on Twitter show the severity of the tremors.
Roads were also torn up:
There is no official information on damage or casualties.
The US weather agency NOAA lifted an initially issued tsunami warning. The north of the country is more threatened by earthquakes.
New Guinea, the Solomon Islands and numerous other islands in the region are located on the so-called Pacific Ring of Fire, where around 90 percent of all earthquakes worldwide occur. The geologically most active zone in the world stretches in a horseshoe shape for almost 40,000 kilometers around the world’s largest ocean.
(DPA/roy)