Qualla: 2024 East Sepik Earthquake

2024 East Sepik Earthquake: Introduction

Thu, 09 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mikenorton, CC BY-SA 3.0. The river was already over the doorsills when the ground began to shake. For weeks the Sepik had been running high, pushing into villages built on stilts and flooding gardens that should still have been dry. At 6:22 on the morning of 24 March 2024, a magnitude 6.9 earthquake struck east-northeast of Ambunti, and the people of the lower Sepik - some wading through chest-deep water inside their own homes - found themselves in a disaster compounded. Wooden houses with thatched roofing do not hold up to severe shaking, and many did not hold up at all. In the village of Sotmeri, all 45 houses collapsed at once.

Image: Mikenorton | CC BY-SA 3.0

2024 East Sepik Earthquake: Two Disasters, One Morning

Thu, 09 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mikenorton, CC BY-SA 3.0. The U.S. Geological Survey recorded the epicentre north of Chambri Lake, a shallow hypocentre that delivered a maximum Modified Mercalli intensity of VII - very strong shaking. Tremors of intensity VI to VII were felt by an estimated 487,000 residents across East Sepik and Sandau...

Image: Mikenorton | CC BY-SA 3.0

2024 East Sepik Earthquake: Villages on the Water

Thu, 09 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mikenorton, CC BY-SA 3.0. Most houses along this stretch of the Sepik are built of timber and sago-palm thatch, raised on stilts against the river's seasonal swings. That architecture is a brilliant adaptation to flooding. It is not an adaptation to earthquakes. At Kamanibit village in Angoram District, 3...

Image: Mikenorton | CC BY-SA 3.0

2024 East Sepik Earthquake: A Province in Two Crises

Thu, 09 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mikenorton, CC BY-SA 3.0. East Sepik declared a state of emergency on 25 March, and the provincial government released 200,000 kina in immediate relief, pledging five million more. Governor Allan Bird asked the U.S. embassy in Port Moresby for 5,000 water filters and buckets - clean drinking water being t...

Image: Mikenorton | CC BY-SA 3.0

2024 East Sepik Earthquake: The Cost Counted

Thu, 09 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Carport, CC BY-SA 3.0. On 30 and 31 March, Prime Minister James Marape visited East Sepik and the other districts devastated by the twinned disasters. He put the combined damage from the earthquake and the floods at 221 million kina - roughly 58.7 million U.S. dollars. The United States released 3.45 m...

Image: Carport | CC BY-SA 3.0

2024 East Sepik Earthquake: Living on the Arc

Thu, 09 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mikenorton, CC BY-SA 3.0. This is not the first disaster for the lower Sepik and it will not be the last. In April 2023, a magnitude 7.1 earthquake southeast of the 2024 epicentre killed eight. In 2002, a 7.6 quake off the Sandaun coast - the largest to hit mainland Papua New Guinea since 1938 - damaged h...

Image: Mikenorton | CC BY-SA 3.0