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Thursday November 16 5:24
AM ET
Huge Earthquake Shakes Pacific
PORT MORESBY, Papua New Guinea (AP) - A huge earthquake shook the Pacific Ocean just off the coast of Papua New Guinea on Thursday afternoon, generating a tidal wave that crashed ashore and damaged a supermarket and other buildings. There were no immediate reports of injuries, but communications were briefly cut with Rabaul and nearby Kokopo, the two towns in the area of northeast Papua New Guinea where the tsunami hit. The towns have a combined population of about 10,000. Bruce Alexander, who runs the Hamamas Hotel in Rabaul, said the town had escaped almost unscathed. ``We've had surges up to one and a half meters (yards) but at this stage the surges have settled down,'' Alexander told The Associated Press in a telephone interview. Japan's Meteorological Agency said the undersea quake registered 7.8 magnitude and the U.S. Geological Survey put it at 8.0. Quakes that strong can cause widespread damage and heavy casualties in populated areas. The quake's epicenter was 20 miles off Rabaul, said John Minsch, a geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey's National Earthquake Information Center in Golden, Colo. Its 8.0 magnitude made it almost 10 times stronger than the temblor that rocked the San Francisco Bay area during the World Series in 1989, Minsch said. Aftershocks were still being felt hours later. As Alexander spoke on the phone, a minor aftershock rattled the town. ``We've got some power lines snapped about one kilometer (a half mile) from the hotel, but other than that it's all pretty good,'' he said. He added that Kokopo also apparently escaped with only minor damage. Nau FM radio in Port Moresby, the Papua New Guinea capital, said ``a small tidal wave'' hit the Tropicana supermarket in Rabaul, causing water damage. A reporter there said she had not heard of any injuries. The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Honolulu initially issued a tsunami warning and watch for most of the Pacific. However, the center later canceled them, saying no destructive Pacific-wide tsunami threat existed, although some areas could experience small sea level changes. Rabaul, a port town, used to be the capital of East New Britain, a region of Papua New Guinea. The capital was moved to Kokopo in 1994 after a major volcanic eruption that killed two people and almost buried Rabaul in ash. Many people who left Rabaul in 1994 never returned. One of the three volcanoes above Rabaul has been rumbling and spewing clouds of smoke for the past month, and the ash cloud has caused minor health problems in both Rabaul and Kokopo. Vulcanologists have said previous minor earthquakes in the region were unrelated to the volcanic activity. Papua New Guinea is located just north of Australia. In 1997, a giant tsunami caused by an undersea earthquake killed more than 3,500 people near Aitapi, on the northwest coast of mainland Papua New Guinea. Tom Roach
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