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Vanuatu’s capital, Port Vila, was rocked by a powerful earthquake on Tuesday, leaving widespread devastation in its wake. Among the buildings that collapsed was one containing the US embassy, along with several others.
Eyewitnesses told AFP of the heartbreaking sight of bodies scattered throughout the city, painting a grim picture of the disaster’s impact.
At 12:47 pm (0147 GMT) on Tuesday, a powerful 7.3-magnitude earthquake hit Vanuatu, its epicenter located 30 kilometers off the coast of Efate. The quake, which struck at a depth of 57 kilometers (35 miles), was recorded by the US Geological Survey and brought significant tremors to the region.
Resident Michael Thompson, who spoke to AFP via satellite phone, revealed that the ground floor of a building housing the US, French, and other embassies had been utterly crushed by the collapsing upper levels. He had posted distressing images of the devastation on social media, which quickly highlighted the scale of the disaster.
“That no longer exists. It is just completely flat. The top three floors are still holding but they have dropped,” Thompson said.
“If there was anyone in there at the time, then they’re gone.”
While Thompson claimed the US embassy occupied the ground floor, this detail could not be confirmed immediately. However, the US embassy in Papua New Guinea later took to social media to confirm that the embassy had sustained “considerable damage” and would remain closed until further notice.
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“Our thoughts are with everyone affected by this earthquake,” the embassy said.
“There’s people in the buildings in town. There were bodies there when we walked past,” said Thompson, who runs a zipline adventure business in Vanuatu.
A landslide on one road had covered a bus, he said, “so there’s obviously some deaths there”.
The earthquake also brought down at least two bridges, according to Thompson, cutting off vital routes for emergency responders. In addition, most mobile networks were knocked out, leaving many isolated and unable to contact loved ones or authorities.
“They’re just cracking on with a rescue operation. The support we need from overseas is medical evacuation and skilled rescue, kind of people that can operate in earthquakes,” he said.
Video footage posted by Thompson and verified by AFP showed uniformed rescuers and emergency vehicles working on a building where an external roof had collapsed onto a number of parked cars and trucks.
The streets of the city were strewn with broken glass and other debris from damaged buildings, the footage showed. A tsunami warning was issued after the quake, with waves of up to one metre (three feet) forecast for some areas of Vanuatu, but it was soon lifted by the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center.
Earthquakes are common in Vanuatu, a low-lying archipelago of 320,000 people that straddles the seismic Ring of Fire, an arc of intense tectonic activity that stretches through Southeast Asia and across the Pacific basin.
Vanuatu is ranked as one of the countries most susceptible to natural disasters such as earthquakes, storm damage, flooding and tsunamis, according to the annual World Risk Report.
