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Two potent quakes hit Pacific
28/05/2006 09:09 - (SA)
Meraiah Foley
Sydney - Two powerful earthquakes struck about a half hour apart near the South Pacific nations of Papua New Guinea and Tonga on Sunday, the US Geological survey said. There were no reports of serious injuries or damage.
The first quake, with a magnitude of 6.2, struck about 189km off the coast of New Britain, an island off Papua New Guinea's northeast coast, at 13:12 (03:12 GMT).
The second quake hit the coast of Tonga, about 4 000km and several time zones away, at 04:36. (03:36 GMT) local time on Sunday.
The USGS recorded that quake with a magnitude of 6.7.
Barry Hirshorn, a geophysicist with Hawaii's Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre, said the two quakes posed no risk of a Pacific-wide tsunami and were unlikely to be related.
"They're probably unrelated, they just happened at the same time," he said.
Another geophysicist at the centre, Victor Sardina, said he believed the earthquakes were unrelated to the magnitude-6.3 quake that leveled hundreds of buildings on the central Indonesian island of Java Saturday, killing more than 3 700 people.
"Sometimes where there is a big earthquake in one area ... it might upset the tectonic activity in other areas, but not necessarily," he said.
"For that we'd have to analyze a whole lot of archive data to see a certain pattern in terms of seismic activity," he added. "I don't think they're related."
Calls to Papua New Guinea's National Disaster Center went unanswered Sunday, and details on injuries or damage were not immediately available.
Police in Tonga's capital, Nuku'alofa, and in the Ha'apai Islands group capital of Pangai to the north, reported no serious injuries or damage.
"Yes, we felt it," said Constable Mosese Latu in Pangai, located near the quake's epicenter.
"There are no damage reports and no injuries - everything's fine," Latu told The Associated Press in a telephone interview.
In Nuku'alofa, publisher Mary Fonua said the quake was short but sharp.
"We definitely felt it and we went running outside the moment it struck because it was a significant jolt," she said.
Papua New Guinea, Tonga and Indonesia are part of the Pacific "Ring of Fire" where earthquakes and volcanic activity are frequent.
Associated Press Writer Ray Lilley in Wellington, New Zealand contributed to this report.
- SAPA
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