By CNN Staff

updated 9:03 AM EST, Wed February 6, 2013

Map: Solomon Islands

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

(CNN) -- An 8.0-magnitude earthquake struck off the Solomon Islands in the South Pacific on Wednesday, triggering a tsunami that killed five people but didn't threaten the wider region.

Four elderly people and one child died after the roughly 1-meter (3-feet) high wave hit the Santa Cruz Islands, an eastern region of the Solomon Islands, said Augustine Bilve, a director at a hospital in Lata, the main town in the area.

The strong waves appeared to have caused damage and disruption at the local airport and nearby villages.

Bilve said that some patients were being relocated, but the hospital was intact.

"Our staff in Temotu province felt the quake and within five minutes there were a number of wave surges, which flooded the runway there," said Andrew Catford, the program director in the Solomon Islands for the humanitarian group World Vision.

World's biggest earthquakes since 1900

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8.0 quake hits near Solomon Islands