More than 30 people are believed to have died after a powerful earthquake struck Papua New Guinea\u2019s mountainous interior, a report said Tuesday as details of \u201cextensive\u201d damage began to emerge.<\/p>\n
The 7.5-magnitude tremor struck 90 kilometres south of Porgera in the Pacific nation\u2019s Enga province early Monday, with two strong aftershocks rattling the rugged region.<\/p>\n
Phone lines were largely cut, but the PNG Post Courier newspaper cited Hela provincial administrator William Bando as saying there were casualties.<\/p>\n
It reported that at least 13 died in the Southern Highlands capital Mendi while 18 others were believed to have been killed in nearby Kutubu and Bosave.<\/p>\n
Some 300 people were injured, it added, and properties damaged, with reports of landslides and sinkholes.<\/p>\n
The Papua New Guinea Today website, quoting Catholic priest Pius Hal, said at least 10 died, including four children, in quake-triggered landslides.<\/p>\n
AFP was unable to confirm the death toll.<\/p>\n
A government assessment team was due to fly into the area Tuesday to get a better idea of the impact, with the military mobilised to help restore services and infrastructure, the government\u2019s chief secretary Isaac Lupari said in a statement.<\/p>\n
\u201cInformation will be provided as this is made available from assessment teams in the area,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
Hela governor Philip Undialu, who was in the capital Port Moresby, told The National newspaper there was widespread damage.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe scale of damage, from information we are getting from the ground, is quite extensive,\u201d he said, adding that there were around 19 landslides between Mendi and the town of Mount Hagen.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur police station, courthouse, hospital … even private houses have been ripped apart or sunk into the ground.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s going to be a massive recovery exercise.\u201d<\/p>\n
The tremor hit at a depth of 35 kilometres around 3:45 am (1745 GMT Sunday), US seismologists said, with aftershocks of 6.0 and 6.3 magnitude recorded.<\/p>\n
Agnes Kep told the Post Courier she was asleep in Mendi when the quake struck.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe could feel the house and the earth shaking, we wanted to run for the door and out of the house, but it was too late,\u201d she said, fearing that if they went outside \u201cthe ground might open up and swallow us\u201d.<\/p>\n
The thatched roof on the house she was in collapsed \u201cbut we didn\u2019t care, we just clung to each other and waited for the shaking to stop\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen we came out we barely recognised everything around us, nothing was familiar to us. The house or tree that was there wasn\u2019t there anymore,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n
The region is home to oil and gas production. ExxonMobil PNG said buildings at its Hides Gas Conditioning Plant were damaged but all its staff were \u201csafe and accounted for\u201d, with non-essential employees to be evacuated.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
More than 30 people are believed to have died after a powerful earthquake struck Papua New Guinea\u2019s mountainous interior, a report said Tuesday as details of \u201cextensive\u201d damage began to emerge. The 7.5-magnitude tremor struck 90 kilometres south of Porgera in the Pacific nation\u2019s Enga province early Monday, with two strong aftershocks rattling the rugged […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":23254,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23253","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23253","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23253"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23253\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23255,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23253\/revisions\/23255"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23254"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23253"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23253"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}