November 22, 2022 Earthquake: Honiara, Solomon Islands

Ref #13456:

Four people injured, many buildings damaged, landslides and power outages occurred and a tsunami with a wave height of 3 cm was recorded at Honiara. Honiara, Guadalcanal, Solomon Islands - CDI: 7; Balimo, Fly River, Papua New Guinea - CDI: 3; Gizo, Western, Solomon Islands - CDI: 3; Mount Hagen, Western Highlands, Papua New Guinea - CDI: 1

Tectonic Summary

The November 22, 2022, M 7.0 Solomon Islands earthquake occurred as the result of shallow normal faulting near the convergent plate boundary between the Australia and Pacific plates. Focal mechanism solutions indicate that rupture occurred on either a steeply-dipping normal fault striking west, or a shallowly-dipping oblique normal and right-lateral strike-slip fault striking northeast. At the location of the earthquake, the Australia plate moves east-northeast at a velocity of about 97 mm/yr, relative to the Pacific plate, subducting at the Solomon Trench.

While commonly plotted as points on maps, earthquakes of this size are more appropriately described as slip over a larger fault area. Normal faulting events of the size of the November 22, 2022, earthquake are typically about 40 km by 20 km (length x width).

The Solomon Islands Arc experiences a very high level of earthquake activity. There have been 16 other earthquakes M 6.5 or larger within 250 km of this event since 2000. The largest was a M 7.8 earthquake located about 215 km southeast on December 8, 2016.

Ref #13377, #13380:

Damages to homes, schools, churches, and other buildings listed at Guadalcanal. Presence of oil in beaches at Tasivarongo Pt and chemical spill at Tenaru school (Guadalcanal).