A powerful magnitude 8.8 earthquake off Russia’s Far Eastern Kamchatka coast triggered tsunami warnings as far away as French Polynesia and Chile, and was followed by an eruption of the most active volcano on the peninsula. The shallow quake damaged buildings and injured several people in the remote Russian region, while much of Japan’s eastern seaboard was ordered to evacuate, as were parts of Hawaii. By the evening, Japan, Hawaii, and Russia had downgraded most tsunami warnings. However, authorities in French Polynesia warned residents of several of the remote Marquesas Islands to move to higher ground and expect waves as high as 2.5 meters (8 feet). The Klyuchevskoy volcano on Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula began erupting later, and waves of nearly half a meter were observed as far away as California, with smaller ones reaching Canada’s province of British Columbia. Waves in Hawaii, Japan, and the Pacific Ring of Fire were triggered by the quake, which occurred on a “megathrust fault” where the denser Pacific Plate is sliding underneath the lighter North American Plate. The Pacific Plate has been on the move, making the Kamchatka Peninsula off Russia’s Far East coast especially vulnerable, and bigger aftershocks could not be ruled out.
A massive earthquake in Russia has triggered tsunami warnings around the Pacific region.
