New Ireland hit by Earthquake.

international | racism & migration related issues | other press Friday September 09, 2005 17:04 by very spooked smurf

Yet another disaster, yet another display of Mother Nature's awesome power.

the Pacific island of New Ireland registered an earthquake today at 7.3 on the richter scale, the epicentre was 96 kilometres under the seabed.

The focus of the quake was 96km (60 miles) underground in the New Ireland region, 40 km (25 miles) east-south-east of Taron, New Ireland, and 870km (540 miles) north-east of the capital, Port Moresby, the USGS reported.

It occurred at 1626 local time (0726 GMT), USGS said.

* No tsunami resulted.

"Margaret Boskuru, a police spokeswoman in the dive resort town of Kavieng in New Ireland's northeast, said bad communications links were hampering efforts to get damage reports from coastal villages closer to the quake's epicenter.
"We have asked the people by radio if they have experienced any damage," Boskuru said by telephone. "We haven't received any reports of damage, but we might not know more until the morning."
Popna said emergency officials would visit the regions on Saturday."

http://mdn.mainichi-msn.co.jp/international/news/20050909p2g00m0in039000c.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4228960.stm
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1126232462728

New Ireland is one of the Papua New Guinea island group. The island is part of the Bismarck Archipelago, and is often described as having the shape of a musket. The tropical island of New Ireland is long, narrow and mountainous. For much of its 320 km length, it is less than 10 km across, yet the central mountainous spine is very steep and rugged. The highest peak is Lambel (2,150 metres or 7,054 feet). The island lies between one and five degrees south of the equator.

New Ireland was colonized by germans in the 19th century, there are no Irish people there.

Here is the Wikipedia guide on Earthquake and other Disaster Preparedness:-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_preparedness