A powerful earthquake with a magnitude of 7.1 rocked Papua New Guinea, 40 miles southwest of the copper mine town Panguna, the Associated Press reports. No immediate damages or casualties have been reported, and a state official has said that the quake was not felt in the capital, Port Moresby, when it hit at 8:31 p.m. local time.
Papua New Guinea frequently experiences earthquakes, being located on the "Ring of Fire," an arc of earthquake and volcanic activity around the Pacific Rim. The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center told the AP that a subsequent Pacific-wide tsunami is not expected to form. Unlike the latest Oceania quake, which struck at a depth of 36.2 miles, at least 150 people in the Philippines are expected to have died from Tuesday's 7.2-magnitude quake.
The Philippines suffered severe damage as the quake hit the epicenter of the central island, Bohol, according to Sky News, comparable in scale to the Haiti earthquake in 2012 that killed hundreds of thousands of people.
"Compared to the 2010 Haiti earthquake that had a magnitude of 7.0, this one had a magnitude of 7.2, slightly stronger," Renato Solidum, head of the state seismology agency, told Sky News of the recent Philippines quake that left at least 93 people dead.
In 1998, a Papua New Guinea earthquake with a magnitude of 7.0 on the country's northern coast generated a tsunami that swamped villages and killed around 2,200, according to the AP. The country, which sits along the Australia-Pacific plate boundary, has not experienced a quake with a magnitude of 7.5 or higher since the '90s.
However, the latest quake is not expected to reach Australia's shores or cause any residual damage or natural disasters.
