Samoa quake generates small tsunami, no damage

Sydney, Sep 28: A strong earthquake with a magnitude of up to 7.0 hit near the South Pacific nation of Samoa today and triggered a small tsunami but there were no reports of damage, officials said.

The centre of the quake was between Samoa, Tonga and American Samoa and at least 250 km from the nearest major populated centres.

The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said a tide gauge in Pago Pago, American Samoa's harbourside capital, had measured the wave at 8 cm. Australian seismologists said Samoa was lucky the quake wasn't bigger and that it was a long way from populated centres.

Keni Lesa, editor of the Samoa Observer newspaper, said the quake was felt across the Samoan capital, Apia, when it hit early in the evening but no unusual wave activity had been experienced.

''It was definitely felt here for at least 30 seconds or more,'' Lesa told Reuters by telephone from Apia about two hours after the quake struck.

''I doubt there would be any damage,'' he said.

A spokeswoman for Tonga's main hospital in the capital, Nuku'alofa, said she had not felt the quake.

The Hawaii-based Pacific Tsunami Warning Center (www.prh.noaa.gov/ptwc/) put the quake's magnitude at 7.0.

Geoscience Australia seismologist David Jetson said the quake had the potential to generate ''a local destructive tsunami'' but that the wave measured in Pago Pago was not big enough to cause major damage.

''Eight centimetres is quite small to start with, so I'm not surprised that there hasn't been any damage,'' he told Reuters.

''It's luck of the draw sometimes with these earthquakes,'' Jetson said, adding that any significant wave would have hit populated areas within 30 minutes.

The U S Geological Survey put the quake's magnitude at 6.7 and said it occurred 43 km (27 miles) beneath the sea floor.

The epicentre was about 195 km southeast of Hihifo in the sparsely populated far northern reaches of Tonga and about 290 km southwest of Pago Pago.

The tsunami warning centre said that there was no tsunami threat for other coastal areas in the Pacific.

It said local authorities would likely have been able to give the all-clear if no major waves had been recorded within two hours of the quake.

Strong earthquakes are relatively common across the far-flung islands of the vast South Pacific.

A 6.8 quake hit a remote part of Papua New Guinea on September 1, while a 6.7 quake rattled Vanuatu on August 8, although neither caused any significant damage or major rises in sea level.

Papua New Guinea lies along the ''Ring of Fire'', a belt of volcanoes circling the Pacific Ocean that is also prone to major earthquakes.

Reuters

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