12 People Are Feared Dead in Vanuatu Quake, Tsunami

A powerful earthquake and a tsunami struck the South Pacific nation of Vanuatu early today, killing up to 12 people and destroying buildings, officials said.

The full extent of the damage was not likely to be known until later, they said.

The Vanuatu Disaster Management Office said six people were killed when the 7.1-magnitude earthquake caused a church to collapse on Pentecost Island. Six others were washed out to sea after a tsunami, a swift-traveling sea wave caused by the quake, swept inland soon afterward, it said.

The earthquake also was felt in the Vanuatu islands of Ambrym and Epi.

“The worst [hit] is the island of Pentecost. Some houses are smashed, and there was a tidal wave,” said Philip Karie, director of the Disaster Management Office.

Disaster officials said staff from the capital, Port Vila, were sent to assess the damage.

Geophysicist Barry Hirshorn at the U.S. National Earthquake Information Center said the size of the tsunami at Pentecost Island would have depended on local variables.

“It could have been two to three meters [about 6 1/2 to 10 feet] in the open water right in close before it hit,” he said.

Hirshorn said no further problems from tsunamis were expected.

“We would venture to guess the only big one that would do any damage was only very local to the earthquake,” he said.

Vanuatu is a group of about 80 islands lying between New Caledonia and Fiji in the southwest Pacific. Port Vila is on the island of Efate.

Vanuatu has a population of 189,000, and about 12,000 people reportedly live on Pentecost Island.