M4.9 Earthquake near south of the Fiji Islands — 16 January 2025

Light earthquakes are widely felt near the epicentre and can rattle windows, dishes and hanging objects. Damage is uncommon and usually limited to cracked plaster or fallen loose items.

A magnitude 4.9 earthquake radiates roughly 338 tons of TNT equivalent in seismic energy.

The USGS assigns this earthquake a significance score of 369, which is below the USGS threshold of more than 600 for its significant-earthquake list. The ranking combines magnitude with available Did You Feel It responses and PAGER alert level; it is not a direct measurement of damage.

That is about 00:16 local solar time at the epicentre, in the early hours of the morning.

The epicentre was located at -24.3301, -176.3160. The closest other recorded event was a magnitude 4.8 earthquake 15 km north of here on 13 July 2026.

The nearest other settlements in our records are ‘Ohonua (111 km east-northeast) and Houma (134 km north-northwest).

At 104 km this was an intermediate-depth earthquake. Energy from events at this depth spreads out before it reaches the surface, which usually means weaker shaking near the epicentre than a shallow quake of the same magnitude, but shaking felt across a wider area.

This catalogue does not ingest eyewitness responses, so it cannot confirm where this earthquake was felt. Based on magnitude alone, an event this size is often felt across the surrounding area. Its intermediate depth normally reduces peak shaking near the epicentre compared with a shallow event of the same magnitude.

The USGS record does not carry a link to NOAA tsunami information. That field is not an all-clear and does not state whether a tsunami occurred. In this case, a damaging tsunami would be less likely because at M4.9 it falls below the magnitude 6.5 threshold that generally applies before a submarine earthquake displaces enough water to generate a damaging tsunami; its 104 km focal depth is too great to deform the sea floor significantly. For an active coastal alert, use tsunami.gov or your local warning authority.

No further earthquakes have been recorded within about 150 km of the epicentre in the seven days after this event.

95 earthquakes of magnitude 4 or above have been logged within roughly 200 km of this epicentre in our catalogue. The strongest was a magnitude 6.5 event near south of the Fiji Islands on 13 April 2025. This M4.9 event released about 251 times less energy than that event.

3 earthquakes have been recorded within 100 km of this epicentre in the past year, 0 of them in the past 30 days.

This earthquake is part of the January 2025 worldwide record. Browse the full monthly archive to compare periods.