Solomons hit by tsunami after powerful Pacific quake

HONIARA (AFP) - A tsunami spawned by a strong 8.0-magnitude undersea earthquake pounded the Solomon Islands Monday, sweeping over villages and leaving several people dead or missing, officials and locals said.
Witness reports spoke of waves washing up to 200 meters (yards) inland and destroying houses, triggering landslides and forcing residents to evacuate to higher land.
The Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre issued a tsunami warning for a series of countries in the region. Japan's Kyodo News, quoting Solomons officials, said some 60 buildings had collapsed in and around the town of Gizo, just 45 kilometres (28 miles) from the quake's epicentre.
A spokesman for the Solomon Islands Office of Emergency Management said there were reports of several people missing after two villages were flooded or hit by associated mudslides in the far west of the archipelago.
"We have unconfirmed reports of a tsunami washing parts of the most western end of the Solomons, where two villages ... near Bougainville are reported to be completely inundated," he told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
The UN-funded communications project Solomon Islands People First Network quoted one of its workers saying villages on the western island of Simbo had been destroyed. "(The worker) estimated waves washed inland a distant of about two hundred meters from the shoreline," the People First Network said. "He estimates almost every building of Tapurai village on the island has been washed away," it added, as well as houses in Marusu village and a school classroom.
It said Gizo was reported to have been inundated by the tsunami. The town has reported unconfirmed deaths, while a female is thought to have been killed in a landslide.
In the capital Honiara, news of the quake and tsunami sent people running screaming from waterfront markets, said Daniel Evans, an Australian lawyer. "I just saw everyone on the street start to run and scream," he told AFP in Sydney. "But people are just back to normal now. People are down along the shoreline looking at the water but everyone's fine. No one is panicking."
The Solomon Islands, 2,575 kilometres east of Australia, has a little over half a million people living on dozens of islands.
It is part of the Pacific "Ring of Fire" where continental plates meet and frequently experiences volcanic and seismic activity. The US Geological Survey reported a series of aftershocks measuring up to 6.7.
A resident from Noro, near Gizo, reported further tremors, causing high seas in the affected areas, People's First Network said. Boats had been swept up on to nearby roads, it added.
A news report in Japan said three people were dead following the tsunami, but officials could not confirm the toll. The Office of Emergency Management's deputy director, Janet Batee, told AFP officials were having trouble contacting the stricken area. "We haven't got solid information from the affected area because of communication problems," she said. "We are still waiting for reliable casualty and damage reports."
A state of emergency was expected to be declared later Monday, Batee said. Solomons police spokesman Mick Spinks said the town of Taro had been hit by a large wave and there were reports of buildings being damaged. The settlement of Lofung also reported being hit with residents evacuating to higher ground, Spinks said.
The quake struck at 7:40 am local time (2040 GMT Sunday) centred about 350 kilometres west-northwest of the capital Honiara at a depth of 10 kilometres, the US Geological Survey and Hong Kong Observatory said. "An earthquake of this size has the potential to generate a destructive tsunami that can strike coastlines in the region near the epicentre within minutes to hours," the tsunami warning centre said.
The warning covers the Solomons, Australia, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu, Nauru, Chuuk, New Caledonia, Pohnpei, Kosrae, Tuvalu, Kiribati and the Marshall Islands, with countries as far away as Japan on alert. Australia issued urged residents on its northeast coast to move to higher ground, while authorities in New Caledonia, some 1,000 kilometres south of the Solomons, evacuated schools in threatened areas.