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LoginMagnitude 7 quake rocks cyclone-battered Loyalty Islands
The island of Maré in New Caledonia's Loyalty group during more tranquil times. Photo: Islandsity.com
Pacific Scoop:
Report – By Patrick Decloitre
A powerful undersea quake has hit overnight off New Caledonia’s Loyalty Islands group, which was also simultaneously bearing the brunt of destructive winds brought by tropical cyclone Vania.
The quake hit à 03:16 (local time, GMT+11), north-east off the main island of New Caledonia, in a usually very high-seismic area.
The epicentre was located near the island of Maré in the Loyalty group, about 28 km north-east of the capital Nouméa, the Denver-based US Geological Survey (USGS) National Earthquake Information Centre reported.
The depth of the temblor’s epicentre was located at a shallow five kilometres under sea level.
No immediate damage was reported.
The Hawaii-based Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre (PTWC) did not issue a tsunami alert following the event, which was also followed by several aftershocks of magnitudes above 5 on the Richter’s scale.
Meanwhile, also during the same night, another quake hit at 01:04 local time (GMT+13) in New Zealand, off the coast of the North Island, some 420 km east of Auckland.
No damage was immediately reported either, even though the temblor, at a depth of some 31 km under sea level, was reported to have been felt by the population.
The fault line located between Vanuatu and New Caledonia has been the scene of an intense and sustained seismic activity since Christmas: the last tremor occurred on January 10, 2011, with a recorded magnitude of 6.4 on the Richter scale.
The previous day, another quake shook the same area with a magnitude of 6.6.
The new episode of intense activity began on Boxing Day (7.1) with several quakes since posting a magnitude above 6.
The 26 December 2010 quake had triggered a brief regional tsunami alert for New Caledonia, Vanuatu and Fiji.
Patrick Decloitre is editor of the Fiji-based Oceania Flash independent news service specialising in the Francophone Pacific.
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[...] http://pacific.scoop.co.nz/2011/01/magnitude-7-quake-rocks-cyclone-battered-loyalty-islands/ This entry was posted on Saturday, January 15th, 2011 at 11:50 am and is filed under Earthquakes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. [...]
The shallowness of the quake and the proximity of the storm with associated low pressure might be circumstantial evidence of one’s influence on the other. If that breaks through the obvious argument put forward in past that things like earthquake have exactly no bearing on what could be evidence of more storms due to warming. Almost a timely statement of shallowness of thought on addressing the problems of the day in a logical way by taking problems in their context of the whole.. Earth itself seems to be dropping gentle hints all obvious but not too obvious that mankind better get its act together.. I’m glad there was no report of heavy damage or loss of life. News, good news often doesn’t make the news. There is much to be thankful for.
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