Nuku’Alofa, Tonga ? A powerful earthquake struck near the South Pacific nation of Tonga early today – Wednesday morning, Kansas time – triggering tsunami warnings for as far away as Fiji and New Zealand. But word of the imminent danger never reached the tiny country closest to the epicenter.

There were no reports of injuries from the magnitude-7.9 temblor, about 95 miles south of Tonga and 1,340 miles north-northeast of New Zealand. Authorities lifted the warnings within two hours, after recording a wave of less than 2 feet.

But nearly 18 months after an earthquake-driven tsunami in the Indian Ocean left at least 216,000 people dead or missing, sparking international calls for a better warning system, Pacific islanders received little or no notice of the threat.

A warning issued by the Honolulu-based Pacific Tsunami Warning Center first went out 16 minutes after the 4:26 a.m. (10:26 a.m. Wednesday CDT) earthquake, which occurred 34 miles below sea level.

“We usually send it through e-mails, faxes, we make phone calls to the places nearest to the epicenter to make sure people are warned,” said Victor Sardina, a geophysicist at the center.

Tonga did not receive the alert because of a power failure there, said the center’s acting director, Gerard Fryer.

“There was problem in Tonga where there was a power outage and they didn’t get our initial message,” Fryer said, adding that the center needs to work with Tonga to correct the problem. He said he did not know whether the power failure was caused by the earthquake.

Mali’u Takai, deputy director of the Tonga’s National Disaster Office, told The Associated Press in a telephone interview that no warning was received.

“Nobody got a warning through the emergency satellite system in our meteorological office,” Takai said. “Judging by the location of the epicenter, we would have been caught out without any warning at all because of the system’s malfunction.”

However, any warning probably would have been too late for Tongans if a major tsunami had come, because the epicenter was so close.

The Honolulu-based center’s warning said it was possible a tsunami could strike Fiji within two hours of the quake and then, an hour later, New Zealand.

In Fiji, a tsunami warning alarm sounded in the capital, Suva. But authorities apparently failed to inform citizens, many on tiny and remote islands with poor communications.

At the Wakaya Club, a private luxury Fijian island resort where recent guests have included Rolling Stone guitarist Keith Richards, staff were alerted to the danger through satellite television news.

But the danger passed without the need to alert the guests or evacuate them to the island’s high point, a resort employee said on condition of anonymity because she was not authorized to make press statements.

In New Zealand, hundreds of residents on the country’s east coast fled their homes after hearing media reports.

A spokesman for New Zealand’s National Crisis Management Center, Allen Walley, said authorities did not issue a national civil defense warning.

“The Ministry of Civil Defense and Emergency Management was in contact with the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center throughout the process and was alerted to a possible tsunami,” he said. “Overseas media reports had incorrectly suggested a threat and the need for evacuations.”

Tonga escaped unscathed.

“We have no reports of injury or fatalities or of structural damage throughout the (Tonga Islands) group,” Takai said. “There are broken windows in a few houses but that’s about it.”