PORT MORESBY, Papua New Guinea
\nA massive 7.6 earthquake struck Papua New Guinea on Sunday, causing landslides, cracking roads and damaging buildings.
\nWhile the extent of the damage remains unclear, photos showed debris strewn across highways and cracks opening up in roads.
\nThe quake struck at a depth of 90 kilometers (roughly 56 miles) near Kainantu, a town with a population of roughly 8,500 people, the United States Geological Survey reported.
\nDebris lies strewn across a highway following a landslide near the town of Kainantu, following a 7.6-magnitude earthquake in northeastern Papua New Guinea on Sunday, Sept. 11, 2022.
\nThere have been no reports of deaths and no official confirmation of the damage caused, but residents took to social media to post pictures of cracked roads, damaged cars and items falling off supermarket shelves, Reuters reported.
\nThe US National Tsunami Warning Center said there was no threat of tsunami waves. Earlier in the day it had said hazardous tsunami waves were possible within 1,000 kilometers (roughly 621 miles) along the coasts of Papua New Guinea and Indonesia.
\nAn earthquake of a similar size that hit the country\u2019s remote highlands in 2018 killed more than 60 people and wounded 500, destroying houses, causing landslides and damaging a major gas plant.
\nPapua New Guinea is vulnerable to earthquakes because it lies along the \u201cRing of Fire\u201d in the Pacific Ocean, where shifting tectonic plates push against each other, causing tremors.
\nThe \u201cring\u201d stretches along a 25,000-mile (40,000-kilometer) arc from the boundary of the Pacific Plate, to smaller plates such as the Philippine Sea plate, to the Cocos and Nazca Plates that line the edge of the Pacific Ocean.
\nIt is home to the world\u2019s most active volcanoes.
\nPeople most at risk from volcanic eruptions and earthquakes live in countries that lie along the Ring of Fire, including Chile, Japan, the US west coast, and other island nations including the Solomon Islands to the western seaboard of North and South Americas.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
PORT MORESBY, Papua New Guinea A massive 7.6 earthquake struck Papua New Guinea on Sunday, causing landslides, cracking roads and damaging buildings. While the extent of the damage remains unclear, photos showed debris strewn across highways and cracks opening up in roads. The quake struck at a depth of 90 kilometers (roughly 56 miles) near […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":282888,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-282873","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n