Rescuers race to find Vanuatu earthquake survivors

Rescuers in Vanuatu are racing to find survivors trapped in buildings, a day after a 7.3-magnitude earthquake struck the capital of Port Vila, killing 14 people.

A seven-day state of emergency has been declared to limit the public’s movement while rescue operations are under way, say police.

Glen Craig, chair of the Vanuatu Business Resilience Council, told the BBC that he had been in “good spirits” and enjoying the Christmas festivities with his wife on Tuesday when the earthquake struck – catching them completely off guard.

“We [in Vanuatu] are used to disasters… you can usually hear the earthquakes coming; you hear like a rumble or a deep roar. But this one we had no warning at all – there was just a sudden boom. This was next level, it felt like something that comes once in a generation.”

At least 10 buildings in Port Vila sustained “major structural damage”, the government’s disaster management office said. Tremors from the earthquake also cut power and mobile services.

Mr Craig said one building that housed several embassies, including the US Embassy and the British High Commission, was particularly affected.

“That building just pancaked,” he said. “There were about seven or eight buildings [in that area] that suffered catastrophic failure, and I’d expect the number of casualties to rise.”

A barrage of aftershocks were also reported overnight.

“Loads and loads of aftershocks throughout the night,” Australian Caroline Bird, who manages a resort in Port Vila, told ABC News. “Probably [can’t] even count how many.”

Six victims died as a result of a landslide, while four others had been in a collapsed building at the time of the quake. The death toll is expected to rise further.

Two of the 14 victims were Chinese nationals, Chinese Ambassador to Vanuatu Li Minggang told state media.

Photos shared by Vanuatu Police on Facebook showed rescuers sifting through rubble by hand and crawling under the floors of collapsed buildings.

Michael Thompson was among those who worked through the night looking for survivors.

He said in a Facebook post that three people had been rescued from a building overnight, but later told news agencies that one of them had subsequently died.

Mr Thompson added that rescue teams were in urgent need of jackhammers, excavators and cold drinking water, adding that many rescuers had “worked through the night”.

An estimated 116,000 people could be affected by the worst impacts of the quake, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said.

According to Mr Craig, however, most of the damage was limited to one particular area. The outskirts of Vanuatu were largely unharmed, as were most people living outside the capital, he added.

“We are used to having hurricanes which cause issues like food scarcity, affect housing. This time there’s none of that,” he said.

“But we normally don’t have this many fatalities as a result of natural disasters – so fatalities at this level, that’s not normal for us.”

Neighbouring Australia will send teams to assist in the search and rescue effort, while the US and France have also pledged aid.

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.

Vanuatu sits in a seismically active area, and is susceptible to frequent large earthquakes and other natural disasters.

“We had Covid, then we had three cyclones last year. So this is really the last thing we needed,” said Mr Craig. “But I think there will be some semblance of normality by Thursday.

“Tomorrow the banks will open, we need some apparatus from Australia for the internet to return which we will get soon, and the power will return in a few days. So we are suffering now, but we will get past it.”