Tsunami waves were possible in three areas of Kamchatka in Russia’s Far East, the Russian Ministry for Emergency Services said yesterday after a magnitude 7.0 earthquake hit the nearby Kuril Islands.
“The expected wave heights are low, but you must still move away from the shore,” the ministry said on the Telegram messaging app, after the latest seismic activity in the area.
However, the Pacific Tsunami Warning System in Hawaii said there was no tsunami warning after the quake. The Russian tsunami alert was later canceled.
Photo: EPA / Russian Institute of Volcanology and Seismology
Overnight, the Krasheninnikov volcano in Kamchatka erupted for the first time in 600 years, Russia’s RIA state news agency and scientists reported yesterday.
Both incidents could be connected to the huge earthquake that rocked Russia’s Far East last week, which triggered tsunami warnings as far away as French Polynesia and Chile, and was followed by an eruption of Klyuchevskoy, the most active volcano on the Kamchatka Peninsula.
The Kuril Islands stretch from the southern tip of Kamchatka Peninsula to the Japanese island of Hokkaido. Russian scientists had warned on Wednesday that strong aftershocks were possible in the region in the next several weeks.
“This is the first historically confirmed eruption of Krasheninnikov Volcano in 600 years,” RIA cited Kamchatka Volcanic Eruption Response Team head Olga Girina as saying.
On the Telegram channel of the Institute of Volcanology and Seismology, Girina said that Krasheninnikov’s previous lava effusion took place within 40 years of 1463 and no eruption has been known since.
The Kamchatka branch of the Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations said that an ash plume rising to 6,000m had been recorded following the volcano’s eruption. The volcano itself stands at 1,856m.
“The ash cloud has drifted eastward, toward the Pacific Ocean. There are no populated areas along its path,” the ministry said on Telegram.
The eruption of the volcano has been assigned an “orange” aviation code, indicating a heightened risk to aircraft, the ministry added.
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