Honiara: A major 8.0 magnitude earthquake jolted the Solomon Islands Wednesday with small tsunami waves hitting Pacific coastlines, washing away houses and leaving a handful of people feared dead.
A quake-generated wave of just under one metre (three feet) reached part of the Solomons, and Vanuatu and New Caledonia also reported rising sea levels, before a region-wide tsunami alert was lifted.
Sirens were heard in Fiji, locals said. “Chaos in the streets of Suva as everyone tries to avoid the tsunami!!” tweeted Ratu Nemani Tebana from the Fiji capital.
Quake-prone Japan, which was hit by a huge tsunami in March 2011 that killed more than 19,000 people, was also on edge with the nation’s weather agency warning a small tsunami could come ashore.
The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center cancelled its regional alert at 0350 GMT, about two and a half hours after the powerful quake struck at 0112 GMT near the Santa Cruz Islands in the Solomons.
“(It) did affect three or four villages, we have some people missing and there is believed to be a few casualties,” Solomons police commissioner John Lansley told ABC radio in Australia.
“I’m hoping that they will be a minimal number.”
Officials could not be reached for confirmation, but Solomon Islands Red Cross secretary general Joanne Zoleveke told AFP she too had been told at least three villages were hit.
“In the Solomon Islands when we talk about villages there can be anything from 10 to 30 houses,” she said.
“We have received a lot of information about houses washed away but we haven’t heard about any deaths as yet. That is what we are waiting for.”
The US Geological Survey said the quake struck the Santa Cruz Islands, which have been rocked by a series of strong tremors over the past week, at a depth of 28.7 kilometres (17.7 miles).
 Several powerful aftershocks were also recorded.
“Sea level readings indicate a tsunami was generated,” the Hawaii-based Pacific centre said after the 8.0 quake, before lifting its tsunami alert for several island nations.
Australia’s earthquake monitoring agency and the Pacific centre said the biggest tsunami wave was measured at 91 centimetres, at Lata, on the main Santa Cruz island of Ndende.
Locals in the Solomons capital Honiara, 580 kilometres (360 miles) from the epicentre, said the quake was not felt there, but some villages on the Santa Cruz islands were destroyed, according to a hospital director.
“The information we are getting is that some villages west and south of Lata along the coast have been destroyed, although we cannot confirm this yet,” the director of nursing at Lata Hospital told AFP.
“There was continuous shaking in Lata but no damaged buildings here,” he added.
The director, Augustine Bilve, said patients were evacuated to prepare for any injured from the villages along the coast.
“We were told that after the shaking, waves came to the villages. So far, we are waiting in Lata and are evacuating patients in case there are any casualties.”
A staff member at the Solomons National Disaster Management Office said officials were concerned about the eastern province of Temotu, which includes the Santa Cruz islands.
“They felt the quake,” he said.
In 2007 a tsunami following an 8.0-magnitude earthquake killed at least 52 people in the Solomons and left thousands homeless. The quake was so powerful that it lifted an island and pushed out its shoreline by dozens of metres.
The Solomons are part of the “Ring of Fire”, a zone of tectonic activity around the Pacific Ocean that is subject to earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.
Before it was lifted, the tsunami warning was in effect for the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Nauru, Papua New Guinea, Tuvalu, New Caledonia, Kosrae, Fiji, Kiribati, and Wallis and Futuna.
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