Friday, October 9, 2026 -A shallow magnitude 6.3 earthquake struck Vanuatu on Thursday, October 8, according to the United States Geological Survey.
The epicentre was about 110 kilometres east of Luganville,
the Pacific island nation’s second-largest city. The USGS assessed the
landslide risk as low and said relatively few people were exposed to the
tremor.
Earthquakes are common in Vanuatu, an archipelago situated
along the Pacific Ring of Fire, a belt of seismic activity stretching through
Southeast Asia and across the Pacific basin.
In August, a magnitude 6.1 earthquake struck about 56
kilometres northeast of Port Olry, a small coastal village, at a depth of 188
kilometres. The report said there were no early reports of damage and that
Vanuatu’s natural hazards department had not immediately issued a tsunami
warning
Elsewhere, twin earthquakes in Venezuela in June killed at
least 6,438 people, according to the report. Venezuelan authorities said about
60,000 homes were affected, including 24,000 left uninhabitable, forcing
thousands of residents into temporary camps. In July, a magnitude 5.1
earthquake in Peru’s Andes region killed five people and injured 21 others in
Chongos Bajo, about 300 kilometres east of Lima, according to the Geophysics
Institute of Peru.
That earthquake struck at a depth of 24 kilometres. National
Civil Defence Institute director General Luis Vasquez attributed significant
damage in some towns to the shallow tremor and the vulnerability of homes built
from adobe or “quincha”, a combination of wood, cane and mud.
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