A witness told AFP he had seen bodies in the streets of the capital Port Vila and videos on social networks showed significant damage to a building housing several diplomatic representations including the French embassy.
The epicenter of this earthquake detected at 12:47 p.m. local time (01:47 GMT) was recorded at a depth of 43 kilometers in the sea, just 30 kilometers west of the capital of this island nation, according to the Institute of Studies United States Geological Survey (USGS), triggering a tsunami warning.
“Tsunami waves were observed,” the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center (PTWC) said in a bulletin. The latter initially said he feared the arrival of waves up to a meter high along certain coasts of Vanuatu, before raising his alert.
Michael Thompson, who lives in the area, told AFP he had seen dead bodies in the streets of the capital Port Vila. He reported collapsed bridges and landslides caused by the earthquake.
According to images he posted online, the earthquake damaged the building housing the American and French embassies in Port Vila.
The earthquake toppled a concrete pillar, cracked a wall and distorted windows in the building, which also houses the diplomatic representations of other countries including New Zealand, again according to images shared on social networks.
Earthquakes are common in Vanuatu, a low-lying archipelago of 320,000 people that straddles the Pacific seismic Ring of Fire, an arc of intense tectonic activity that stretches from Southeast Asia to the Pacific Basin.
Vanuatu is ranked among the countries most vulnerable to natural disasters such as earthquakes, storm damage, floods and tsunamis, according to the annual Global Risks Report.
Much smaller waves (around 30 centimeters according to the PTWC) were also feared in Fiji, Kiribati, New Caledonia, the Solomon Islands and Tuvalu.
