HONIARA, Solomon Islands (AP) — A powerful undersea earthquake Monday in the South Pacific sent a tsunami several yards high crashing into the Solomon Islands, devastating at least one village and killing at least four people, officials and residents said.
Police and residents said a wave about 10 feet high struck the western town of Gizo, inundating buildings and causing widespread destruction within five minutes of the bone-rattling earthquake.
“There wasn’t any warning — the warning was the earth tremors,” Alex Lokopio, the premier of the Solomon’s Western Province, told New Zealand’s National Radio. “It shook us very, very strongly and we were frightened, and all of a sudden the sea was rising up.”
“I saw the wave ... all of a sudden the water was just rising up and moved toward the island and hit the houses in the coastal area, and all of their property was washed out to the open sea,” he said.
Lokopio said up to 4,000 people had fled to a hill behind the town and that they may need emergency shelter and other supplies.
Reports on the number of deaths varied.
A man who answered the telephone at the Gizo police station said there were initial reports that eight people, six of them children, had been killed by the tsunami but they were still unconfirmed. The phone cut out abruptly before the man gave his name.
Julian McLeod of the Solomon Islands National Disaster Management Office said there were unconfirmed reports that two villages in the country’s far west were flooded.
“Two villages were reported to have been completely inundated,” McLeod told Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio. “We have received reports of four people missing.”
Mcleod told Sky News only three deaths had been reported, while national police spokesman Mick Spinks told The Associated Press there were unconfirmed reports of four deaths.
“Our biggest problem is communications, because most of the high frequency radio system there was submerged,” Spinks said.
Gizo resident Judith Kennedy said water “right up to your head” swept through the town.
“All the houses near the sea were flattened,” she told The Associated Press by telephone. “The downtown area is a very big mess from the tsunami and the earthquake,” she added. “A lot of houses have collapsed. The whole town is still shaking” from aftershocks.