Rescue operations continue in Vanuatu after quake kills 14, injures over 200
The 7.3-magnitude earthquake, which hit yesterday, caused heavy damage, especially in the capital. Several aftershocks were recorded overnight. Rescuers are racing against time to save survivors trapped in collapsed buildings. Two Chinese nationals are among the dead. The Pacific island nation has close relations with China.
Port Vila (AsiaNews/Agencies) – Rescuers are fighting a race against time to find survivors, trapped in the rubble of buildings that collapsed following a strong earthquake that hit Vanuatu yesterday, triggering a tsunami alert that was later cancelled.
The provisional death toll from the 7.3-magnitude earthquake that struck the capital Port Vila is at least 14 dead and more than 200 injured; however, the number could rise in the coming hours, particularly from the central part of the city where most victims and damage are concentrated as aftershocks continued overnight.
A witness who was in the tallest building in Vanuatu at the time of the quake reports that he got out safety just in the nick of time before the structure collapsed on the people still inside.
Police declared a seven-day state of emergency to limit the movement of people during rescue operations.
According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, 116,000 people could be affected by the worst impacts.
Speaking to the BBC, Glen Craig, president of the Vanuatu Business Resilience Council, said that he was in "good spirits" yesterday, enjoying the Christmas holidays with his wife when the earthquake hit, taking them completely by surprise.
"We [in Vanuatu] are used to disasters... you can usually hear the earthquakes coming; you hear like a rumble or a deep roar. But this one we had no warning at all – there was just a sudden boom. This was [the] next level, it felt like something that comes once in a generation.”
At least 10 buildings in Port Vila sustained "major structural damage", the government's disaster management office said. Tremors also disrupted electricity and mobile phone services.
Craig added that a building that housed several embassies, including the recently opened US embassy and the British High Commission, was hit particularly hard.
Six victims died in a landslide, while four others were in a building that collapsed. The death toll is expected to rise.
The Chinese ambassador in Vanuatu Li Minggang confirmed that two of the 14 dead were Chinese.
Vanuatu is an archipelago of some 80 atolls with a population of 300,000. Located west of Fiji and thousands of kilometres east of northern Australia, it is the Pacific nation with the closest ties to China; the country's only newspaper also publishes online news in Chinese.
On the 40th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries (1982-2022), the China Daily stressed that “China has always spared no effort in providing assistance to Vanuatu with no political strings attached,” promoting development and better living conditions for its population, winning “praise from all walks of life”.
China also built the country’s parliament complex, a sports field and various infrastructures for “Vanuatu's agriculture and tourism development.”
Last July, the United States also opened an embassy in the island nation, a move seen as part of its power game with China for supremacy in the Asia-Pacific region.
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12/10/2022 16:45
02/10/2020 14:52
