Vanuatu

A 7.0-magnitude earthquake shook the Pacific archipelago of Vanuatu on Sunday, trigguring a tsunami warning in nearby waters.

[The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center](https://www.tsunami.gov/) issued a tsunami warning for coasts within 300 186 miles of the epicenter. Vanuatu has a population of 280,000 and sits on the Pacific Ring of Fire, the arc of seismic faults around the Pacific Ocean where earthquakes and volcanoes frequently occur. 8 (UPI) -- A 7.0-magnitude earthquake shook the Pacific archipelago of Vanuatu on Sunday, trigguring a tsunami warning in nearby waters.

Tsunami warning issued for parts of the South Pacific Ocean region after 7.0 magnitude quake hits Vanuatu.

Vanuatu has a population of 280,000 people and consists of several dozen islands. “We ran for our lives and then we ran to our homes.” The quake hit around 11:30pm local time (12:30 GMT) on Sunday. [Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre](https://www.tsunami.gov/?p=PHEB/2023/01/08/23008051/2/WEPA40) said that a tsunami threat it had issued for nearby Vanuatu coasts has passed. It was centred 23km (14 miles) from Port Olry and hit at a depth of 27km (17 miles), the agency said. [Vanuatu](/where/vanuatu/), the United States Geological Survey has said, triggering a tsunami warning for the region that was withdrawn hours later.

Frightened villagers fled to higher ground fearing a tsunami when a 7.0-magnitude earthquake struck late Sunday just off the coast of the Pacific island ...

"A Big One!!" "Lots of things broken all around." "Tsunami waves reaching 0.3 to one meter above the tide level are possible for some coasts of Vanuatu," the NWS Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre in Hawaii said. "We were right on the sea, we were looking for crab on the coast," he said. "People were moving to higher ground," he added, for fear of a tsunami tidal wave. Kayson Pore, a 22-year-old student from the village of Hog Harbour in Espiritu Santo, said he was looking for crab on the beach with half a dozen friends when the earth shook.

The Partnership stands as evidence that translating the rhetoric of localisation to reality is possible, say Fremden Yanhambath and Anna Gibert.

This extended as far as the replacement of the managing contractor, which similarly failed to grasp that imposition of “one-size-fits-all” processes and systems was detrimental to supporting the complexity of social change in a unique Pacific Island operating context. With the backing of a DFAT country team that was open to innovation, the Partnership undertook a new design process, led by the ni-Vanuatu team leader, which did not see the main problems of Vanuatu’s skills system as needing to be solved by technical “experts”. While the details are still being worked out, the plan is now for the Vanuatu Skills Partnership to become a local entity, and to receive DFAT grant funding directly rather than via a support contractor. It has catalysed a complete restructure of the Ministry of Education, including the provincial skills centres it originally established being formally integrated into the government system. Moreover, rather than being a “doer” of development, the focus of the investment became to facilitate and convene development processes, using its relative neutrality to bring together diverse “green shoots” of reform momentum. Within the aid industry, false assumptions and patronising approaches have been perpetuated by ubiquitous jargon of the sector. This was underpinned by a granular political economy analysis, and understanding that the implementation team would need to work relationally and politically to navigate these thorny challenges. Critically, this also meant supporting a local staff member to take on this politically savvy convening role – the first-ever ni-Vanuatu as a team leader of an Australia-funded initiative. The project was led by an international team leader, with a large number of long-term, full-time international “technical advisers”. The root causes lay well below the surface – a complex intersection of resource distribution, corruption, normalised behaviours, and relationships and allegiances – and were ones that no foreign outsider had the local intelligence, legitimacy and influence to shift. But this was simply the tip of the iceberg. The panel was chaired by DFAT and organised by the [International Development Contractor Community](https://idcc.org.au/), with the intention to drill down into the realities of locally led development cooperation, and away from the rhetoric of the latest industry buzzword.