Massive 8.8-Magnitude Quake Off Russia Sparks Tsunami Alerts Across Pacific

A massive earthquake struck Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula on Wednesday, with tsunami warnings extending all around the Pacific, and shaking nerves as far away as Japan, Hawaii, and the Galapagos Islands. The quake registered at 8.8 magnitude, and was located off the coast of eastern Kamchatka, near the city of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky. The quake was powerful enough to send people flying off their feet. “I thought the walls were going to fall at any moment,” said Yaroslav, 25, who lives in the city. “The ground shook forever.”

The quake occurred at a shallow depth of just 19 kilometres and shook the ocean. Tsunami alerts and warnings went up all around the Pacific Rim. Tsunami alerts and warnings were later downgraded, but not before evacuations and panic had already commenced.

In Russia, initial accounts reported that structures were battered and some individuals were hurt, but miraculously, no fatalities were reported. Kremlin press secretary Dmitry Peskov attributed “solid construction” and the “prompt response of alert systems.”

But reports say it was only the start!!

In Severo-Kurilsk, the port town was swamped with tsunami waves up to five meters, flooding streets, filling fishing boats, and seeping into a fish processing factory. Video from a drone showed that entire shorelines were underwater, with seawater encroaching on storage buildings. Then, as if the Earth was not already speaking loudly enough, Klyuchevskoy volcano on the Kamchatka peninsula erupted. Lava billowed down the western side, and explosions and bright light were visible in the night sky. Klyuchevskoy is not your average volcano but one of the tallest and most active volcanoes in the world.

Across the Pacific, Japan was reminded of the trauma from the 2011 disaster and evacuated without hesitation. Tsunami horns echoed across coastal towns, evacuating workers temporarily from the still-tender Fukushima nuclear plant – no damage was reported, and radiation levels were normal.

In Hawaii, air transport at the Honolulu airport was cancelled, and also, in Hawaii, beaches were evacuated. Further away, waves reached almost half a metre across California and British Columbia with a tenuous warning. All warnings were rescinded by the evening.

In French Polynesia, the distant Marquesas Islands prepared for the worst. Waves struck Nuku Hiva, the largest of the Marquesas, and up to 10 more waves were anticipated overnight.

Some were expected to reach heights of 2.5 meters, which is high enough to cause great concern. Officials urged residents to evacuate to high ground.

Even the remote Galapagos Islands, off the coast of Ecuador, forced their inhabitants away from coastal areas as a precaution. All of this, off of an earthquake thousands of kilometers away. The earthquake occurred on the Pacific Ring of Fire, that seismologically hot area where tectonic plates are always grinding against and moving past each other. Scientists observed that the earthquake occurred at a “megathrust fault” where the Pacific Plate is moving in a southeast direction below the North American Plate, and is a type of fault that produces disastrous earthquakes.

Within a Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky hospital operating room, security footage caught a surgical team fighting to stabilize their patient during an operation as everything shook around them. Physicians gripped tools and stabilized each other’s hands. Somehow, they missed not a step.

Later in the day, the Kuril Islands, a chain of islands extending toward Japan, were struck by a 6.07 aftershock to remind the world that it was not over yet.

The earthquake – the strongest to hit Kamchatka since 1952 – has communicated a message to the world about how interconnected and vulnerable we are. From Russia’s frozen ports to Japan’s nuclear facilities, to Pacific island nations, and American coastal cities, we felt the ground shake.