Many countries downgrade tsunami alerts after powerful earthquake off Russia
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Version 1 of 2. Impact of water surges less than initially feared after quake of 8.8 magnitude hit near Russia’s Kamchatka peninsula Tsunami warning – live updates One of the strongest earthquakes ever recorded triggered a series of tsunami warnings and evacuations across much of the Pacific, although many governments later downgraded their warnings after the impact of the water surges was less than initially feared. The shallow quake hit off eastern Russia and there were reports of waves up to 4 metres high in some remote regions in the Pacific. Later on Wednesday, the Russian Geophysical Survey said the quake had also led to a violent eruption of the Klyuchevskoy volcano, which is near the epicentre. The 8.8-magnitude earthquake struck at a depth of 12 miles (19.3km) and was centred 78 miles (126km) south-east of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, a city in Russia’s Avacha Bay, the US Geological Survey said. One death has been reported so far related to the tsunami. The Asahi Shimbun news outlet in Japan said a 58-year-old woman died after her car veered off a cliff as she tried to reach the safety of higher ground. Many reports suggested damage was most significant in Russia, where a tsunami with a height of 3 to 4 metres was recorded along parts of the shore. Video footage showed a flooded port and a building being swept away. The government in Moscow claimed there were no fatalities. With the earthquake creating huge ripples that gradually made their way across the ocean, waves of up to 1.3 metres were recorded along shores in Japan, while smaller surges later hit Hawaii. However, a major, destructive tsunami was not expected and no damage was recorded. Hours later, parts of the US west coast were being hit by waves. Many were reported to be less than a foot above the normal sea level. Officials still warned residents to stay away from the water, advising that the first waves were not necessarily the most powerful. Authorities in French Polynesia warned several of the Marquesas Islands, home to about 9,500 people in the southern Pacific and more than 5,000 miles from the earthquake epicentre, to expect tsunami waves up to 4 metres high. Later, officials updated the forecast to say the highest waves would be 2.5 metres. As sets of waves moved south and east, Chile raised its tsunami warning to the highest level for most of its lengthy Pacific coast and said it was evacuating hundreds of people. In Russia, Sergei Lebedev, a regional minister for emergency situations, said several people were injured during the initial earthquake in parts of Kamchatka, a Pacific peninsula off the country’s east coast. Oleg Melnikov, a regional health minister, told Russia’s state news agency Tass: “[People] were hurt while running outside and one patient jumped out of a window. A woman was also injured inside the new airport terminal.” He added: “All patients are currently in satisfactory condition and no serious injuries have been reported so far.” Kamchatka’s governor, Vladimir Solodov, described the quake in a post on Telegram as “serious and the strongest in decades of tremors”. He said a kindergarten in the area had been damaged. In Severo-Kurilsk, a Russian town of about 2,000 people approximately 215 miles south-west of the earthquake’s epicentre, tsunami waves submerged the fishing plant, according to authorities. The waves reached as far as the town’s second world war monument about 400 metres from the shoreline, according to the mayor, Alexander Ovsyannikov. “Everyone was evacuated. There was enough time, a whole hour. So everyone was evacuated, all the people are in the tsunami safety zone,” he said at a crisis meeting. After 11 hours of warnings, Russian authorities lifted their tsunami alerts late on Wednesday evening. A tsunami watch was in effect for the US island territory of Guam and Micronesia. The US National Tsunami Warning Center said waves as high as 3 metres could hit Ecuador. In Japan, much of the country’s eastern seaboard – devastated by a powerful earthquake and tsunami in 2011 – was ordered to evacuate. Officials said more than 900,000 residents in 133 municipalities along Japan’s Pacific coast were under evacuation orders. “Those near the coast should evacuate immediately to higher ground or safe buildings in the areas covered by the tsunami warning from Hokkaido to Wakayama prefecture [hundreds of miles to the south],” said Japan’s chief cabinet secretary, Yoshimasa Hayashi. “Please be aware that after the initial wave, second and third waves of tsunamis can be even higher.” The Japan Meteorological Agency said a tsunami as high as 40cm had been detected in 16 locations as the waves moved south along the Pacific coast from Hokkaido to just north-east of Tokyo. The Fukushima nuclear plant, which went into meltdown after being hit by the 2011 tsunami, was evacuated, although no abnormalities have been observed at the site. Wednesday’s quake struck about 160 miles from Hokkaido, Japan’s northernmost of the country’s four big islands, and was felt there only slightly, according to Japan’s NHK television channel. Factory workers and residents in Hokkaido evacuated to a hill overlooking the ocean, footage from the broadcaster TBS showed. A newscaster on the Japanese public broadcaster NHK said: “Please evacuate quickly. If you can move quickly to higher ground and away from the coast.” By late on Wednesday, Japan had downgraded its tsunami alert but left an advisory in place along the Pacific coast. The US National Tsunami Warning Center, based in Alaska, issued a tsunami warning for parts of the Alaska Aleutian Islands and an alert for portions of the US west coast, including California, Oregon and Washington. The alert also included a vast swath of Alaska’s coastline, including parts of the panhandle. As waves started to hit the shores, those warnings were later cancelled. Kamchatka and Russia’s far east sit on the Pacific “ring of fire”, a geologically active region prone to earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. Japan, also part of the active seismic zone, is one of the world’s most quake-prone countries. Earlier in July, five powerful quakes – the largest with a magnitude of 7.4 – struck in the sea near Kamchatka. The largest quake was at a depth of 12.4 miles and was 90 miles east of the city of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, which has a population of 180,000. On 4 November 1952, a magnitude-9.0 quake in Kamchatka caused damage but no reported deaths and set off 9.1-metre waves in Hawaii. |