One of the strongest earthquakes ever recorded yesterday struck Russia’s sparsely populated far east, causing tsunamis up to 4m high across the Pacific and sparking evacuations from Hawaii to Japan, with warnings of up to 1m waves in Taiwan.
The magnitude 8.8 quake, which struck off Petropavlovsk on Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula, was the largest since 2011 when a magnitude 9.1 quake off Japan caused a tsunami that killed more than 15,000 people.
Almost 2 million people in Japan were told to head to higher ground and tsunami warnings were issued across the region, before being rescinded or downgraded — although scientists warned of the danger of powerful aftershocks.
Photo: Geophysical Service of the Russian Academy of Sciences via AFP
A tsunami had already hit and flooded the port town of Severo-Kurilsk, crashing through the port area and submerging the local fishing plant, officials said.
Russian state television footage showed it sweep buildings and debris into the sea.
Authorities said the population of about 2,000 people had been evacuated.
Photo: Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations via AFP
The waves reached as far as the town’s World War II monument about 400m from the shoreline, Severo-Kurilsk Mayor Alexander Ovsyannikov said.
Several people were injured in Russia by the quake, state media reported, but none seriously.
“The walls were shaking,” a Kamchatka resident told state media Zvezda.
Photo: Reuters
“It’s good that we packed a suitcase, there was one with water and clothes near the door. We quickly grabbed it and ran out... It was very scary,” she said.
Later yesterday, authorities in the Kamchatka Peninsula announced that the tsunami warning had been lifted.
Officials from countries with a Pacific coastline in North and South America — including the US, Mexico, Ecuador and Colombia — issued warnings to avoid threatened beaches and low-lying areas.
In Hawaii, Governor Josh Green said flights in and out of the island of Maui had been canceled as a precaution.
The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center later downgraded the alert for Hawaii to an advisory and local authorities canceled a coastal evacuation order.
Earlier, tsunami sirens blared near Hawaii’s popular Waikiki surf beach where traffic was gridlocked as Hawaiians escaped to higher ground.
“STAY STRONG AND STAY SAFE!” US President Donald Trump wrote on social media.
Yesterday’s quake was the strongest in the Kamchatka region since 1952, the regional seismic monitoring service said, warning of aftershocks of up to magnitude 7.5.
The epicenter was in about the same location as the magnitude 9.0 quake that year that caused a Pacific-wide tsunami, the US Geological Survey said.
Yesterday’s quake was one of the 10 strongest earthquakes ever recorded, the organization said.
The quake was followed by at least six aftershocks that further rattled the Russia’s far east, including one of magnitude 6.9.
The US Tsunami Warning Centers said waves exceeding 3m above the tide level were possible along some coasts of Ecuador, northwestern Hawaiian islands and Russia.
Between 1m and 3m waves were possible along some coasts of Chile, Costa Rica, French Polynesia, Hawaii, Japan and other islands in the Pacific, it added.
Waves of up to 1m were possible elsewhere, including Taiwan, Australia, Colombia, Mexico, New Zealand and Tonga.
In Taitung, hotel resort worker Wilson Wang, 31, said: “We’ve advised guests to stay safe and not go out, and to avoid going to the coast.”
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