OMEN
05-03-2006, 09:05 PM
A tsunami warning was issued for New Zealand and Fiji this morning following an earthquake near Tonga.
The warning has now been cancelled.
The quake, measuring 7.8 on the Richter Scale, hit 170km north-east of Tonga at 3.26 am (NZT), at a depth of 38km, GNS said.
The tsunami warning was issued by the Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre at 3.42am.
They said it was not know if the quake actually generated a tsunami.
If it did it may have hit Fiji at 5.13am and Gisborne, on the east coast of the North Island at 6.21am.
Coastal communities were evacuated and police were swamped with calls this morning after the tsunami alert was issued for Gisborne and the East Coast.
New Zealand jazz musician Richard Adams and his band were in a three story hotel in Tonga a few hundred metres from the coast when the quake struck.
"It was the biggest earthquake I've ever felt," Mr Adams told CNN.
"Things were falling over, my bag was falling over it went on for at least ... well, it felt like five minutes, but I guess it was probably a minute."
Power to the hotel was cut, and it was littered with broken glass and plates, and pot plants were toppled.
In panic, one guest jumped from third floor balcony into the hotel court yard.
"He was the only tourist injured. He jumped from his room, maybe he was afraid," said William Vea, the night receptionist at the Pacific Royale Hotel.
Mr Adams and his jazz group were in Tonga playing at a royal function. Other band members went down to see if water level changed, but guests got no warnings or advice from hotel staff, he said.
"Everybody was woken, everybody in this hotel ... there's no way you could have slept through it, it was an extremely, extremely large quake.
"This building is built of concrete block and you know it hasn't really cracked that I can see, nothing major has fallen over in the street outside."
Guests waited patiently in the streets until they were allowed back to their rooms.
The Hawaii-based Pacific Tsunami Warning Center put out an alert for New Zealand, Fiji and the rest of the Pacific but cancelled it within two hours of the quake, initially reported at 8.1 then downgraded to 7.8.
Inspector Barry Smalley of the Police Northern Communications Centre said between 50 and 60 people an hour called the centre after media reports predicted a big wave could hit Gisborne by 6.20am.
He said the centre usually received only about one or two calls an hour at that time.
"We just urged them not to panic, but advised them to switch on their radios and read the civil defence section in the back of their phonebooks."
Meanwhile, police at stations along the East Coast, including Tokomaru Bay, Tolaga Bay and Ruatoria, had all been alerted and were on standby, he said.
On December 26, 2004 an earthquake measuring 9.0 on the Richter scale struck off the Indonesian province of Aceh, unleashing a tsunami that killed 220,000 people around the Indian Ocean, most in Aceh.
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The warning has now been cancelled.
The quake, measuring 7.8 on the Richter Scale, hit 170km north-east of Tonga at 3.26 am (NZT), at a depth of 38km, GNS said.
The tsunami warning was issued by the Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre at 3.42am.
They said it was not know if the quake actually generated a tsunami.
If it did it may have hit Fiji at 5.13am and Gisborne, on the east coast of the North Island at 6.21am.
Coastal communities were evacuated and police were swamped with calls this morning after the tsunami alert was issued for Gisborne and the East Coast.
New Zealand jazz musician Richard Adams and his band were in a three story hotel in Tonga a few hundred metres from the coast when the quake struck.
"It was the biggest earthquake I've ever felt," Mr Adams told CNN.
"Things were falling over, my bag was falling over it went on for at least ... well, it felt like five minutes, but I guess it was probably a minute."
Power to the hotel was cut, and it was littered with broken glass and plates, and pot plants were toppled.
In panic, one guest jumped from third floor balcony into the hotel court yard.
"He was the only tourist injured. He jumped from his room, maybe he was afraid," said William Vea, the night receptionist at the Pacific Royale Hotel.
Mr Adams and his jazz group were in Tonga playing at a royal function. Other band members went down to see if water level changed, but guests got no warnings or advice from hotel staff, he said.
"Everybody was woken, everybody in this hotel ... there's no way you could have slept through it, it was an extremely, extremely large quake.
"This building is built of concrete block and you know it hasn't really cracked that I can see, nothing major has fallen over in the street outside."
Guests waited patiently in the streets until they were allowed back to their rooms.
The Hawaii-based Pacific Tsunami Warning Center put out an alert for New Zealand, Fiji and the rest of the Pacific but cancelled it within two hours of the quake, initially reported at 8.1 then downgraded to 7.8.
Inspector Barry Smalley of the Police Northern Communications Centre said between 50 and 60 people an hour called the centre after media reports predicted a big wave could hit Gisborne by 6.20am.
He said the centre usually received only about one or two calls an hour at that time.
"We just urged them not to panic, but advised them to switch on their radios and read the civil defence section in the back of their phonebooks."
Meanwhile, police at stations along the East Coast, including Tokomaru Bay, Tolaga Bay and Ruatoria, had all been alerted and were on standby, he said.
On December 26, 2004 an earthquake measuring 9.0 on the Richter scale struck off the Indonesian province of Aceh, unleashing a tsunami that killed 220,000 people around the Indian Ocean, most in Aceh.
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