11 killed in earthquake aftershock

PAPUA NEW GUINEA – Authorities in Papua New Guinea’s Highlands say 11 people died during a strong earthquake aftershock on Monday morning.

The magnitude-6 aftershock hit the region at 6.00am, one week after a magnitude-7.5 quake that struck in the early hours of February 26, killing a still unknown number of people, triggering landslides, flattening buildings and closing oil and gas operations.

Provincial authorities said the fatal aftershock caused a landslide that buried people in the small village of Huya.

They say the total death toll in the province – one of several affected by the quake – is now about 60, with more reports yet to come in.

Three aftershocks stronger than magnitude-5, including the magnitude-6 quake, shook the mountainous Southern Highlands, about 600 kilometres north-west of the capital Port Moresby, the US Geological Survey said.

“We haven’t slept. It’s been shaking all through the night,” said William Bando, provincial administrator of Hela Province, by telephone from Tari, about 40 kilometres from where the shocks hit.

“What we experienced this morning could have caused more damage, but we don’t know. It almost threw me out of bed.”

Aid agencies have voiced their concern for an estimated 150,000 people they say are in urgent need of food and water supplies in the wake of last week’s earthquake.

The director of the International Red Cross in PNG, Udaya Regmi, said the February 26 quake destroyed or damaged the homes of about 7000 people, while 147,000 were in severe need of food, water and sanitation.

Landslides have cut roads, preventing the delivery of aid to several places where it’s most needed.

“The challenge is road access, it’s still not accessible to trucks and four-wheel-drives,” Regmi said. “Big trucks cannot go there. It’s one of the reasons the food is becoming less and less. There are no fears of starvation yet but we’ve not got the full picture.”

Papua New Guinea declared a state of emergency across the earthquake-hit region last week but the scale of the disaster will not be known until relief workers and authorities can complete their assessments in the worwt affected areas.

A report by the World Food Programme for the United Nations two days after the earthquake estimated 465,000 people were exposed to the disaster of which 143,000 needed urgent humanitarian assistance and 64,000 were suffering from extreme food insecurity.

Geohazards experts also warned of another potential crisis, saying the landslides had blocked rivers and created dams, or “quake lakes”, that could break and flood in the rainy season, putting thousands of people at risk.

- ABC