The Pacific Ocean area adjacent to the New Caledonia archipelago recorded a strong earthquake for the second consecutive day this Saturday.
The magnitude 7.1 quake was detected at a depth of 35 kilometers, about 300 kilometers east of the coast of Caledonia.announced the American Institute of Geophysics (USGS, for its acronym in English).
The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center (PTWC) did not issue a tsunami warning, but warned of the possibility of waves smaller than 12 inches (30 cm).
Waves could reach the Pacific islands of Fiji, Kiribati, Vanuatu and Wallis and Futuna, the PTWC said, within a 300-kilometer radius of the epicenter.
The USGS detected a magnitude 7.7 quake on Friday at a depth of 37 kilometers near the Loyalty Islands and 333.8 kilometers southeast of the coast of New Caledonia.
Friday’s earthquake prompted the PTWC to issue a tsunami warning, prompting the evacuation of the population off the coast of New Caledonia. The alert was canceled more than three hours later.
The PTWC had said that “it was possible” a tidal wave within a thousand miles of the epicenter, namely waves of up to three meters in the island state of Vanuatu.
The tsunami alert prompted police and firefighters to evacuate the population from the coast of New Caledonia.
Anti-tsunami sirens were activated and the population was advised to move away from the coast, New Caledonia’s director of civil defense Colonel Marchi Leccia told the radio.
A New Caledonian journalist said he felt “a strong tremor for at least 15 to 20 seconds”.
The shock was especially felt at Lifou in the Loyalty Islands.
New Caledonia is located in the so-called “ring of fire” of the Pacific Ocean, an area of great seismic and volcanic activity, where about 7,000 earthquakes are recorded annually, most of them moderate.
Source: DN
