Tsunami Destroys Villages in Solomon Islands

SYDNEY—A powerful earthquake in the South Pacific triggered a tsunami that destroyed villages and killed at least five people in the Solomon Islands Wednesday, according to government and hospital officials. A wave measuring three feet reached the island chain after the quake hit around midday local time, the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said. The magnitude-8 quake, with a depth of 17.8 miles (28.7 kilometers), was centered about 220 miles east of the Santa Cruz Islands, part of the Solomon Islands nation, according to a bulletin issued by the U.S. Geological Survey. A magnitude-6.3 quake had struck minutes earlier in the same area, and there were at least three aftershocks measuring above magnitude-6 later in the day. An initial tsunami warning for the Pacific region was soon canceled. Official accounts of the extent of the damage in the Solomons remained vague hours after the fact, and a government official said communication with the worst-hit areas remained difficult. Among the affected areas has been the provincial capital of Lata, a city of about 2,300 in Temotu Province where hospital patients were evacuated to higher ground.
Chris Roger, a registered nurse at Lata Hospital, said by telephone that five deaths had been confirmed; one child, an elderly male and three elderly females. "Houses have been washed down, and the airport has been filled with seawater," said Charles Elliott Fox-Ngali, also a registered nurse at Lata Hospital who was reached by telephone. Loti Yates, director of the national disaster management office in the Solomon capital Honiara, confirmed that the airport in Lata had been damaged by the tsunami and that logs and debris which had washed into the area by the wave were blocking the runway. Mr. Yates said four villages had been ruined, but he couldn't confirm any fatalities. Mr. Yates said a team of officials will be sent to the region early Thursday. "Some villages were inundated with saltwater … At this stage we have very limited information," he said. Conditions in Honiara were described as calm, although some residents had moved away from coastal areas as a precaution, said Chris Nemaia, an official at the Solomon Islands Visitor Bureau. "People are already up on the higher grounds," he said. Christian aid organization World Vision, which is active in the affected region, said at least 100 homes had been destroyed in Lata and that power outages were widespread. Located in the Pacific's so called Ring of Fire—a volcanic region that stretches across the ocean—the Solomon Islands have been hit by strong earthquakes in the past, including a major quake in 2007 that left 52 people dead. James Goff, director of the Tsunami and Natural Hazards Research Group at the University of New South Wales, said it will likely be some time before the extent of the damage becomes clear. "This part of the Solomon Islands is in a particularly active part of the boundary between the Australian and Pacific plates, and has seen a swarm of earthquakes recently," he said. —Arpan Mukherjee contributed to this article.