A large crack in a road near the town of Kainantu, following a magnitude 7.6 earthquake in northeastern Papua New Guinea on Sunday, September 11, 2022.
(CNN) --
A 7.6 earthquake struck Papua New Guinea on Sunday, triggering landslides, cracking roads and damaging buildings.
At least 16 people have been confirmed dead, according to the Red Cross, and the death toll is expected to rise sharply as reports come in from towns affected by the landslides.
There has been widespread damage, with concrete roads destroyed and bridges broken.
The quake struck at a depth of 90 kilometers (about 56 miles) near Kainantu, a city with a population of about 8,500 people, the US Geological Survey reported.
Debris is strewn along a road following a landslide near the town of Kainantu, triggering a magnitude 7.6 earthquake in northeast Papua New Guinea on Sunday, September 11, 2022.
The US National Tsunami Warning Center reported that there was no threat of tsunami waves.
Hours earlier, he had said that dangerous tsunami waves were possible within a radius of 1,000 kilometers (about 621 miles) along the coasts of Papua New Guinea and Indonesia.
A similar-sized earthquake that hit the country's remote highlands in 2018 killed more than 60 people and injured 500, destroyed homes, caused landslides and damaged a major gas plant.
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Papua New Guinea is vulnerable to earthquakes because it lies along the "Ring of Fire" in the Pacific Ocean, where moving tectonic plates push against each other and cause tremors.
The "ring" stretches along a 40,000-kilometre (25,000-mile) arc from the Pacific Plate boundary, to smaller plates like the Philippine Sea Plate, to the Cocos and Nazca Plates at the edge of the Pacific Ocean.
It is home to the most active volcanoes in the world.
People most at risk from volcanic eruptions and earthquakes live in countries along the Ring of Fire, including Chile, Japan, the US West Coast, and other island nations, including the Solomon Islands to the West Coast from North and South America.
Papua New Guinea