{"id":24375,"date":"2018-12-05T06:22:58","date_gmt":"2018-12-05T06:22:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=24375"},"modified":"2018-12-05T06:22:58","modified_gmt":"2018-12-05T06:22:58","slug":"tsunami-warning-as-magnitude-7-5-quake-strikes-off-new-caledonia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=24375","title":{"rendered":"Tsunami warning as magnitude 7.5 quake strikes off New Caledonia"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A shallow and powerful magnitude 7.5 earthquake has struck off the east coast of New Caledonia in the South Pacific, according to seismologists,prompting a tsunami alert and evacuations on the Pacific island, authorities said.<\/p>\n

The undersea quake on Wednesday was only 10km deep and about 155km east-southeast of the Loyalty Islands off New Caledonia’s east coast. Earthquakes are generally more destructive when the epicentre is near the surface.<\/span><\/p>\n

The epicentre was some 300 kilometres east of Noumea. There were no immediate reports of damage from the quake.<\/p>\n

The Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre said that tsunami waves had been “observed” in the region but did not say where.<\/p>\n

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Macron hails New Caledonia vote to ‘remain French’<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n

According to AP, a tsunami warning was also raised as far as Fiji.<\/p>\n

Residents of New Caledonia, a French territory, received text messages directing them to go to refuge centres immediately, with waves of up to three metres possible, according to the warning centre.<\/p>\n

According to Reuters, residents were told to move more than 300 metres from the shore, and if possible, to grounds 12 metres above sea level.<\/p>\n

People in New Caledonia and nearby Vanuatu said they did not feel the quake, according to the AFP news agency, while tsunami warning sirens were not immediately activated in Vanuatu.<\/p>\n

“Hazardous tsunami waves are forecast for some coasts,” the warning centre said, after earlier warning that the danger zone included “coasts located within 1000km of the earthquake epicentre.”<\/p>\n

A spokesperson for French mining and metals group Eramet , which runs the Doniambo nickel plant in the main harbour of Noumea, said the company had activated its tsunami alert process.<\/p>\n

“The procedure is to ask people who work near the sea to move higher up.”<\/p>\n

The spokesperson said he had felt the quake, describing it a strong but not long-lasting shaking.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Dan McGarry, the media director at the Vanuatu Daily Post, said he heard only of three small wave surges hitting the southern island of Aneityum.<\/p>\n

He said the waves traveled only a couple of meters beyond the normal tidal waves, and that everybody was fine on the island.<\/p>\n

McGarry said he felt the quake where he is based in Vanuatu’s capital, Port Vila, as a mild shaking.<\/p>\n

“We get a lot of earthquakes every year,” he said. “The tsunami warning was what was different this time, though.”<\/p>\n

New Caledonia, a cluster of islands home to about 270,000 people, is a unique collectivity of France.<\/p>\n

It sits on the Pacific “Ring of Fire”, the arc of seismic faults around the Pacific Ocean where most of the world’s earthquakes and volcanic activity occur.<\/p>\n

The nearby Vanuatu, is an independent state with over 270,000 population. It was previously occupied jointly by France and the United Kingdom.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The US Geological Survey initially gave the magnitude of the quake as 7.6, before revising it downwards slightly.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\n SOURCE:
\n Al Jazeera and news agencies<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A shallow and powerful magnitude 7.5 earthquake has struck off the east coast of New Caledonia in the South Pacific, according to seismologists,prompting a tsunami alert and evacuations on the Pacific island, authorities said. The undersea quake on Wednesday was only 10km deep and about 155km east-southeast of the Loyalty Islands off New Caledonia’s east…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":24376,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24375","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24375","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24375"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24375\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/24376"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24375"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24375"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24375"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}