The dreaded wave did not finally break.
The tsunami alert triggered this Friday morning in New Caledonia, after a magnitude 8.1 earthquake near the Kermadec, uninhabited Pacific islands that are part of New Zealand, was lifted two hours after it was triggered.
It was “in all the French territories of the Pacific”, tweeted the Minister of Overseas Sébastien Lecornu around 02:25 (Paris time).
The tsunami alert has been lifted on all French territories in the Pacific.
Thank you to all the State services and communities mobilized to allow, as a precaution, evacuations from coastal areas in less than 2 hours.
- Sébastien Lecornu (@SebLecornu) March 5, 2021
The highest wave, one meter, occurred in New Caledonia on the island of Maré, in the archipelago of the Loyalty Islands, while on the island of Pines, in Yaté and in Nouméa of waves between 45 cm and 80 cm were observed, indicated the local civil security, which specified that no damage was to be deplored.
11 schools evacuated
After a series of powerful earthquakes, tens of thousands of inhabitants of the coastal areas of New Caledonia, New Zealand and Vanuatu fled this Friday to the heights and inland.
Early Friday morning, the 64 New Caledonian tsunami warning sirens sounded on the beaches of Noumea and firefighters evacuated bathers and athletes.
Most stores had also lowered their curtains, AFP found.
What a tsunami siren sounds like.
#eqnz pic.twitter.com/bSRYtuvx5j
- Sacha Judd (@szechuan) March 4, 2021
A toll-free number has been made available to the population while 11 schools near the coast in Noumea have been evacuated, said the southern province.
“A wave of one to three meters will impact the whole of New Caledonia.
People must leave the beaches and stop all nautical activity, children must not be picked up from school so as not to create congestion ”, had alerted to the NC radio 1st Alexandre Rossignol, spokesperson for Security civilian, reporting a “real threat”.
Shakes of 7.4 and 6.9
The rise in water levels was much less than expected.
Finally, only a few people found themselves a little dehydrated after being stranded for several hours in traffic jams in Tahiti.
It was indeed forbidden to travel on the East Coast, which caused traffic jams in the North-East of Tahiti.
A magnitude 8.1 earthquake struck near the Kermadec, uninhabited Pacific islands belonging to New Zealand.
The earthquake, which struck at 8:28 a.m. local time (19:28 GMT Thursday), was preceded by tremors of 7.4 and 6.9 in the same region.
The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center (PTWC), located in Hawaii, has warned that waves up to three meters high can hit Vanuatu and New Caledonia.
This organization added that smaller waves were as likely to hit countries as far from the epicenter of the earthquake as Japan, Russia and Mexico, as well as the shores of South America.
Peru issued a tsunami alert on its 3,000 km long coast Thursday evening, but without an evacuation order for the time being.
"The arrival (...) of waves is expected at dawn on March 5," said the National Emergency Operations Center (Coen) on Twitter.
Yellow alert in Chile
In Chile, it is the "yellow alert for coastal municipalities" and "the state of precaution which requires, preventively, to abandon the beach areas in the face of a small tsunami with waves of up to one meter", according to the National Emergency Office (Onemi).
New Zealand emergency services initially ordered the evacuation of coastal areas over long stretches of northern New Zealand (the North Island).
A few hours later, shortly after midnight GMT on Friday, the National Emergency Management Agency however withdrew its alert, assuring that "the biggest waves have now passed".
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This South Pacific country, used to seismic and volcanic activity, has just marked the 10th anniversary of the 6.3 magnitude Christchurch earthquake, in which 185 people died.