A powerful but deep 7.2-magnitude earthquake rocked Papua New Guinea on Tuesday, officials said, cutting power and knocking items off shelves though there were no immediate reports of serious damage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The quake struck at a depth \nof 127 kilometers about 30 kilometers from the town of Bulolo at 2119 \nGMT Monday according to the US Geological Survey, and was felt in the \ncapital Port Moresby about 250 kilometres away. Officials said there \nwere no immediate reports of major damage and the depth of the tremor \nmeant there was no tsunami threat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“We have no reports as yet” of\n serious damage, Inspector Leo Kaikas, Bulolo police station commander, \nsaid. “We are still assessing the situation,” he said. Staff at Bulolo’s\n Pine Lodge hotel said there was very minor damage from objects falling \noff tables, but nothing more serious. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Residents in Lae, more \nthan 100 kilometres away, said the quake knocked things off shelves and \nworktops and cut electricity in some areas. “I had just woken up,” \nChristopher Lam, a designer who lives in the city, told a news agency. \n“It lasted a little more than 30 seconds. We had household items knocked\n off their shelves and the power got cut. “Things seem to have returned \nto normal. No structural damage here, though I’m not sure about other \nbuildings in the city.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There are estimated to be around 1,10,000\n people living within 50 kilometers of the epicentre, according to UN \ndata. The Moresby-based National Disaster Management office said while \nthere were no early reports of damage, but news from the quake zone \ncould take time to trickle in. “We are awaiting assessments,” a \nspokesman said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The country’s rugged highlands region was hit by a\n 7.5-magnitude quake in February last year that buried homes and \ntriggered landslides, killing at least 125 people. The scale of that \ndisaster did not become apparent for days due to PNG’s poor \ncommunications and infrastructure. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
There are regular earthquakes\n in Papua New Guinea, which sits on the so-called Pacific Ring of Fire \n— a hotspot for seismic activity due to friction between tectonic \nplates. Along the South Solomon trench, an area of the Pacific that \nincludes PNG, there have been 13 quakes of magnitude 7.5 or more \nrecorded since 1900, according to USGS data.\n\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A powerful but deep 7.2-magnitude earthquake rocked Papua New Guinea on Tuesday, officials said, cutting power and knocking items off shelves though there were no immediate reports of serious damage. The quake struck at a depth of 127 kilometers about 30 kilometers from the town of Bulolo at 2119 GMT Monday according to the US […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":60782,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-60781","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\/60781","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=60781"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60781\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":60783,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60781\/revisions\/60783"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60782"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60781"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60781"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60781"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}