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A powerful 7 magnitude earthquake rocked the Ring of Fire nation Vanuatu this Friday morning, prompting officials to issue a tsunami alert which was soon after called off, the United States Geological Survey reported.
The National Tsunami Warning Center in Vanuatu warned that the quake could generate waves of up to 10 feet on the coast, but concerns were later diluted and the NTWC later cancelled the alert saying there is no longer a tsunami threat from this earthquake.”
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The epicenter of the seism was located 124 miles from the capital Port Vila.
Moses Stevens, a Port Vila journalist, told AFP he had no reports of damages or casualties in spite of how strongly the quake was felt.
"We really felt the shake because it was so shallow, but all we lost was a vase and some flowers," he added. "I'm told there was a small wave, but that was the extent of it."
Vanuatu is part of the "Ring of Fire", a zone of tectonic activity around the Pacific that is subject to frequent earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.
On April 16, a powerful 7.4 magnitude quake devastated large parts of the coastal region of Ecuador, leaving behind close to 700 deaths, 15,000 people injured and destruction of about 9,000 buildings.
Source: USGS
Japan was also affected by various earthquakes earlier in April, including a 6.1 magnitude that left almost 50 people dead. Japan Times reported that this year alone the nation has been rattled by over 1,000 tremors, compared to 1,400 in all of 2015.
Japan is also a Ring of Fire nation, which according to the government is bracing for a more powerful seism this year that they believe could strike below Tokyo, one of the most populated cities in the world with 36 million inhabitants, and that it would be accompanied by a tsunami they say would swallow most of the country, leaving behind hundreds of thousands of deaths and close to US$900 billion in damages.
The Ring of Fire is a string of 1,800 active volcanoes — 90 percent of the world's volcanoes and where about 80 percent of the earthquakes take place — and fault lines that circle the edges of the Pacific Ocean and that extends 25,000 miles long and runs from Chile along the South American coast through Central America, Mexico, the U.S. west coast and the southern region of Alaska through the Aleutian Islands to Japan, the Philippines and Indonesia. It then curves back to New Guinea, the southwest Pacific islands and New Zealand.
It runs from Chile, northwards along the South American coast through Central America, Mexico, the west coast of the US and the southern part of Alaska, through the Aleutian Islands to Japan, the Philippines and Indonesia before it curves back to New Guinea, the southwest Pacific islands and New Zealand.
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