5 dead, homes wrecked in Papua New Guinea quake

At least five people were killed and an estimated 1,000 homes were destroyed when a 6.9-magnitude earthquake rocked Papua New Guinea, officials said on Monday as disaster crews poured into the region.

Dozens of villages nestled on the banks of the country’s famed Sepik River were already battling floods when the quake struck early on Sunday morning.

“So far, about 1,000 homes have been lost,” said Allan Bird, governor of East Sepik province, adding that emergency crews were “still assessing the impact” from a tremor that “damaged most parts of the province.”

Provincial police commander Christopher Tamari told Agence France-Presse (AFP) that authorities had so far recorded five deaths in the wake of the disaster.

He cautioned that, with emergency crews still venturing into the remote and jungle-clad region, the number of fatalities “could be more.”

Photos showed damaged wooden houses with thatched roofs collapsing into the surrounding knee-high floodwaters, while an aging bridge in the provincial capital Wewak buckled under the strain.

Bird said there was a pressing need to get medical supplies, clean drinking water and temporary shelter into the disaster zone.

Prime Minister James Marape has approved a $130-million emergency funding package to help recovery efforts following “a spate of natural disasters” across the country.

“Papua New Guinea has been recently hit hard by [the] earthquake, flooding caused by heavy rain and ensuing landslips, king tides, strong winds and others,” he said in a statement on Sunday night following the quake.

Flooding, landslides and torrential rains earlier this month killed at least 23 people in Papua New Guinea’s interior Highlands region.

The Sepik River twists for hundreds of kilometers through East Sepik, flowing down from the jungle highlands and out toward the tropical coast.

Largely untouched by urban development and industry, it is one of the nation’s last pristine waterways, as well as the longest river on the island.

Teeming with native species and rare plants, it has in the past been dubbed the planet’s “second Amazon.”

Earthquakes are common in Papua New Guinea, which sits on top of the seismic “Ring of Fire,” an arc of intense tectonic activity that stretches through Southeast Asia and across the Pacific basin.

Although they seldom cause widespread damage in the sparsely populated jungle highlands, they can trigger destructive landslides.

Many of the island nation’s 9 million citizens live outside major towns and cities, where the difficult terrain and lack of sealed roads can seriously hamstring search-and-rescue efforts.

Papua New Guinea is ranked as the world’s 16th most at-risk country to climate change and natural hazards, according to the 2022 World Risk Index.