Snapped Shot has more, including photos of the damage in the region.
Reports from Gizo are coming in and they're suggesting that there were no tsunami warnings issued and reports from other areas are slow coming in because of communications problems:
Julian McLeod of the Solomon Islands National Disaster Management Office said there were unconfirmed reports that two villages in the country’s far west were flooded.
“Two villages were reported to have been completely inundated,” McLeod told Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio.
National police spokesman Mick Spinks said “our biggest problem is communications, because most of the high frequency radio system there was submerged.”
Gizo resident Judith Kennedy said water “right up to your head” swept through the town.
“All the houses near the sea were flattened,” she told The Associated Press by telephone. “The downtown area is a very big mess from the tsunami and the earthquake,” she added. “A lot of houses have collapsed. The whole town is still shaking” from aftershocks.
The U.S. Geological Survey said the quake measured magnitude-8.0 and struck at 7:39 a.m. about 6 miles beneath the sea floor, 217 miles northwest of the capital, Honiara.
Regional warnings downgraded
The Pacific region from Australia to Hawaii went on high alert for several hours after the quake struck between the islands of Bougainville and New Georgia.
But the region-wide warnings were downgraded as the danger period passed. There was no repeat of 2004 tsunami disaster, when a magnitude 9 quake sent massive waves slamming into the coastlines of a dozen countries around the Indian Ocean’s rim, killing or leaving missing about 230,000 people.
Gizo, a regional center, is just 25 miles from the earthquake’s epicenter.
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