M5.4 Earthquake near Vanuatu region — 20 February 2026

Moderate earthquakes can damage poorly built or unreinforced structures near the epicentre, while well-engineered buildings typically escape serious harm. Shaking is often strong enough to wake sleeping residents over a wide area.

A magnitude 5.4 earthquake radiates roughly 1,898 tons of TNT equivalent in seismic energy.

The USGS assigns this earthquake a significance score of 449, 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 02:27 local solar time at the epicentre, in the early hours of the morning.

This event was deeper than 96% of the 282 earthquakes recorded in Vanuatu in our catalogue and stronger than 85% of them.

The epicentre was located at -13.8873, 172.4030. The closest other recorded event was a magnitude 4.3 earthquake 18 km northwest of here on 25 January 2025.

At 609 km this was a deep-focus earthquake, occurring well inside the subducting slab rather than in the crust. Deep events are rarely damaging even at large magnitudes, though they can be felt over very long distances.

This catalogue does not ingest eyewitness responses, so it cannot confirm where this earthquake was felt. Based on magnitude alone, an event this size can be felt widely and may cause minor local damage. Its deep focus normally weakens surface shaking while spreading perceptible motion over a broad area.

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 M5.4 it falls below the magnitude 6.5 threshold that generally applies before a submarine earthquake displaces enough water to generate a damaging tsunami; its 609 km focal depth is too great to deform the sea floor significantly; it occurred inland rather than beneath the sea floor. 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.

6 earthquakes of magnitude 4 or above have been logged within roughly 200 km of this epicentre in our catalogue. The strongest was a magnitude 4.7 event near Vanuatu region on 17 March 2026. This M5.4 event released about 11 times more energy than that event.

1 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 February 2026 worldwide record, and of earthquakes in Vanuatu during February 2026. Browse the full monthly archive to compare periods.