An earthquake of magnitude 7.4 has struck Vanuatu's capital Port Vila, damaging buildings and cars with at least one person reported killed.
Vanuatu state broadcaster VBTC showed footage of vehicles crushed in a building collapse on a street lined with retailers. The broadcaster reported one person had been trapped in a collapsed building.
Other footage posted on social media showed buckled windows and collapsed concrete pillars on a building hosting foreign missions in the capital, including the US, British, French and New Zealand embassies.
"Our High Commission building, which is co-located with the United States, the French and the United Kingdom, has sustained significant damage," a spokesperson for New Zealand's foreign ministry said in a statement.
There were communications outages across the country, the statement added.
Police reported at least one person had been killed and injured people had been taken to hospital, according to Dan McGarry, a journalist with the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project based in Vanuatu, in a post on X."I saw three people seriously injured on gurneys waiting treatment," he said.
"There is substantial damage around town. We've got a building that has pancaked," McGarry told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in an interview.
The road connecting Port Vila to its main port was blocked by landslides, he added.
Reuters was not able to immediately able to confirm the casualty figures, with authorities in Vanuatu not reachable for comment.
The US Geological Survey (USGS) said the quake was at a depth of 10 km.
The US Tsunami Warning System cancelled an initial tsunami warning for Vanuatu.
Authorities in the US, Australia and New Zealand said there was no tsunami threat to their territories.
A journalist in Port Vila says the magnitude 7.3 earthquake was violent and lasted about 30 seconds.
Dan McGarry posted on X that the earthquake, which struck just before 3pm, had a high frequency vertical shake which was unusual for Vanuatu.
He described it on X as "30 seconds in objective time. About a century in subjective time".
He says his wife could see a large landslide, and sirens were going off.
Red Cross's deputy head of delegation for the Pacific, Finau Leveni, said her colleague Katie Greenwood had spoken to a Red Cross official in Vanuatu for a short time after the quake before the call was cut off.
The person said it was a very scary, very long earthquake that had caused significant damage.The Red Cross building in Port Vila has been badly damaged and furniture was thrown around.
The Grand Hotel in Port Vila has been cracked down the centre.
Damage has extended to provincial areas such as Santo, Leveni said.
"Our partners in Red Cross are already kicking into action."
She said the charity would already have systems and processes in place for how to handle the emergency.
"At this stage we don't have too much idea of what the needs are."
They were waiting for communications to be re-established and New Zealand Red Cross was helping with this.
It was "gut wrenching" to be looking at images from Port Vila and not be on the ground to help, Leveni said.
She estimated there were 20-30 Red Cross people on the ground in Vanuatu but it was backed up by a very extensive network of volunteers who operated outside the capital as well.
They could help as many as 4000 families quickly and supplies would be replenished with incoming aid from other partners.
- RNZ/Reuters
