Fourteen dead as Vanuatu searches for earthquake survivors
The death toll from the earthquake that hit Vanuatu on Tuesday has risen to 14, as search teams sift through debris in hopes of finding survivors.
Another 200 people are receiving treatment for injuries, with strong aftershocks from the 7.3-magnitude tremor continuing overnight.
The quake caused significant damage to buildings, including the embassies of the US, France, the UK, and New Zealand, and disrupted power and mobile services.
Vanuatu’s police have declared a seven-day state of emergency to restrict public movement while search and rescue operations proceed.
Of the fatalities, four died in a hospital in Port Vila, the capital, while six were victims of a landslide and four others died in a collapsed building, with the death toll expected to rise.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs estimates that up to 116,000 people could be impacted by the quake’s worst effects.
Australia, neighboring Vanuatu, has pledged to send teams to assist in the ongoing search and rescue effort, according to Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles in a statement to ABC News on Wednesday.
Photos shared by Vanuatu Police on Facebook showed rescuers sifting through rubble by hand and crawling under the floors of collapsed buildings.
From the rubble of one three-storey building, rescuers heard the voices of at least three people, Vanuatu resident Michael Thompson told AFP news agency.
Thompson said rescuers used “everything we can get our hands on”, including jack hammers, grinders and concrete saws, to rescue people.
The earthquake struck at 12:47 local time (01:47 GMT) on Tuesday and triggered a brief tsunami warning.
Vanuatu, a low-lying archipelago of some 80 islands in the South Pacific, is located west of Fiji and thousands of kilometres east of northern Australia.
The nation sits in a seismically active area, and is susceptible to frequent large earthquakes and other natural disasters.
