WELLINGTON – A tsunami triggered by the powerful earthquake in Japan ploughed across the South Pacific on Saturday, sending people fleeing to higher ground but causing only minor damage and no loss of life. Dozens of low-lying island nations were placed on high alert after a monster 10-metre tsunami smashed into Japan following devastating 8.9-magnitude earthquake centred near the northeastern city of Sendai.
In the Marquesas islands sirens blared, warning residents to flee to higher ground. Although waves up to three metres were forecast, they were less than a metre when they swept in, but still flooded some houses.
In New Zealand, civil defence officials warned of waves of just over one metre and advised people to stay away from beach areas.
However, the first wave “was rather insignificant and hardly visible to the naked eye,” said civil defence operations manager David Coetzee as hundreds of people made their way to the shoreline to see what the fuss was about.
“It looks pretty good out there and we are not the first ones out,” Graeme Barnard told the Waikato Times newspaper as he set out for a day’s fishing off Hamilton, on the west coast of the North Island. In Tonga, where a tsunami that killed nine people 18 months ago remains fresh in the memory, many people rushed to higher ground for safety while others tested the power of the tsunami by going for a swim.
“The current was flowing differently and you could feel it in the water,” said Matangi Tonga editor Pesi Fonua, who entered the water near the capital Nuku’alofa. “We noticed that the water along the reef was higher but the foreshore level by the Dateline Hotel was lower than usual.”
In the Solomon Islands, aid agency Oxfam said that a surge of water destroyed one house and washed several canoes out to sea in the northern Isabel province. And Papua New Guinea experienced dramatic and unusual tides which caused flooding in some areas, according to officials. Oxfam was supplying tarpaulin, food and water in the affected area.
224,000 in Philippines go home after tsunami alert
MANILA – Nearly a quarter of a million people returned to their homes all along the eastern coast of the Philippines on Saturday as the threat of a tsunami from Japan’s devastating quake subsided, officials said. The Philippine government ordered the country’s mostly rural Pacific seaboard cleared of people on Friday hours after a magnitude 8.9 quake unleashed tsunamis on Japan’s east coast and triggered a Pacific-wide alert. AFP
