The tremor was felt in northern Papua New Guinea. According to the witness, the ground swayed “as if you were sailing a ship”.
The earthquake, whose focus was at a depth of 12 km, occurred at 8 a.m. 46 min. local (Monday 11:46 p.m. Lithuanian) time, USGS said in a statement.
The earthquake’s epicenter was about 20 km offshore, near Wewak, the capital of the Pacific island nation’s East Sepik province.
The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center (PTWC) has declared that there is no tsunami threat.
“I think it lasted almost a minute,” said Danny Seolo, an employee staying at the Wewak Village Inn Hotel and Apartments.
“It wasn’t very bad, but the ground swayed like you were sailing a boat or something,” he told AFP by phone, adding that he saw no damage.
Earthquakes are common in Papua New Guinea, which is located on the Pacific Ocean’s “Ring of Fire,” an area of intense seismic and volcanic activity.
Although they rarely cause significant damage in sparsely populated jungle highlands, they can trigger devastating landslides.
In April of this year, at least seven people were killed in a 7-magnitude earthquake in a jungle-covered area deep in the country.
About 180 houses were destroyed in the Karavari district near the epicenter of the earthquake.
Last September, 10 people were killed when a 7.6-magnitude earthquake leveled hundreds of homes, damaged roads and cut power in the north of the country.
It was the worst earthquake to hit Papua New Guinea since 2018, when a shallow 7.5-magnitude quake killed nearly 150 people in Hela province.
Many of Papua New Guinea’s nine million people live outside major cities, and the country’s difficult terrain and unpaved roads can make search and rescue operations outside cities difficult.
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2024-08-30 09:56:16
