A magnitude 6.9 earthquake struck offshore Vanuatu in the South Pacific at 02:31 UTC on Saturday, October 24 (1:31 p.m. local time), 197 km west-northwest of Port-Olry at a shallow depth of 10 km, the US Geological Survey (USGS) said in its reviewed solution.
Source: USGS event us6000u4j2, Oct 24, 2026
The European-Mediterranean Seismological Centre (EMSC) independently recorded the same event as magnitude 6.9, at a depth of about 8 km, with the epicentre about 240 km northwest of Luganville. The USGS put the epicentre at 14.056°S, 165.546°E, based on 57 reporting stations, and listed a green PAGER alert, which indicates a low likelihood of casualties and damage in its modelled estimate.
Source: EMSC via WFY24; USGS, Oct 24, 2026
USGS data flagged the earthquake for tsunami evaluation. No casualties or damage figures were reported in the USGS data available when this story was published, and monitoring based on the same data assessed there was no tsunami threat from the event, given its location and the available information. Readers in coastal areas should follow official guidance from Vanuatu authorities.
Source: USGS event data; Watchers monitoring of USGS data, Oct 24, 2026
Four minutes later, at 02:35 UTC, a second earthquake of magnitude 6.3 struck 170 km northwest of Port-Olry, also at 10 km depth, with a green alert and no tsunami flag, USGS said. The area, northwest of the Espiritu Santo group, is seismically active, and the 6.9 event struck close to where a large earthquake was recorded four days earlier.
Source: USGS events us6000u4jb and us6000u4j2, Oct 24, 2026
Vanuatu lies on the Pacific ‘Ring of Fire’, where the Australian and Pacific tectonic plates interact and strong earthquakes are frequent. Early automated listings elsewhere put the first event as high as 7.2 before revisions; the USGS reviewed magnitude used here is 6.9.