Vanuatu earthquake: Young mother who worked in Australia among latest victims identified

A young mother fresh off a nine-month Queensland work stint is among the dead in Vanuatu’s worst earthquake this century.

Australian rescue and medical teams have arrived in Port Vila as the Pacific nation races to respond to Tuesday’s 7.3-magnitude earthquake.

The death toll stood at 14 late on Wednesday with at least 200 injured, according to the Red Cross.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the crews would be on the ground from Wednesday evening and the people of Vanuatu had a long road to recovery ahead.

“Australia stands ready to provide further assistance to our Pacific family in their time of need,” he wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter.

No Australians have been confirmed dead in the quake, but one case in particular shows the ties between the two Pacific neighbours.

Rodney Prestia, chief executive of labour hire business iComply, told AAP that a 26-year-old woman who he identified only as Valerie was crushed in a collapsed building.

“It’s an absolute tragedy and our team’s been really rattled by it,” he said.

Tim Cutler, the Sydney-raised boss of Vanuatu Cricket, was having lunch in the downtown Coffee Tree cafe when the mighty tremor shook the buildings around him.

“The first shake was not an alien feeling to anyone that has spent much time in Vanuatu. You get frequent tremors,” he told AAP.

“But it just got stronger and stronger so I went from a moment of ‘oh’ to ‘oh no’.

“Things were just flying around and I was lucky not to be hit by anything. A couple of people I was with had a few bruises, some people were screaming, some were quiet, a few people were running around.

“A water tank fell over and rolled onto a lady hiding under a table ... it was just surreal slow-motion (that felt) somewhere between a dream or a movie or at a theme park.”

With the airport reopening on Wednesday afternoon, relief and support from Australia was able to touch down including a C17 Globemaster and C130 Hercules with personnel from Queensland and NSW fire and rescue.

Australian Federal Police, a foreign affairs department crisis response team and a medical assistance team were also deployed.

Taskforce leader, chief superintendent Douglas May, said their first priority was to help people trapped under the rubble of collapsed buildings.

“Ultimately we know there are lives to be saved there right now,” he said.

“After that, we’ll be able to help locate the deceased and then helping with any other disaster assistance that the country might request.”

UNICEF child protection officer Rebecca Olul said she had left the charity’s Vanuatu office for lunch and exited a cafe when the quake struck, throwing her to the ground.

“I was just alongside a three-storey building so when I went down the immediate thing I did was look up and hope it wasn’t going to come down on me,” she told AAP.

UNICEF’s Port Vila field office in a six-storey building was damaged, but all 19 staff escaped injury and are now working from makeshift options.

Ms Olul said she had driven around town and people were still sitting in parks and under trees, scared of aftershocks causing further collapses.

International assistance was needed to restore key infrastructure and it was unclear how long the recovery could take, she added.

Mr Prestia, who pivoted his business to Pacific workers when backpackers stopped arriving owing the COVID-19 pandemic, said he had worked with more than 1000 “fantastic” workers from Vanuatu.

He said any Australians wanting to help Vanuatu should visit the Melanesian paradise when conditions allow.

“It’s two and a half hours away. It’s pristine,” he said.