7.8-magnitude earthquake jolts Alaska, tsunami warning issued, then revoked
A massive 7.8-magnitude earthquake jolted the Alaskan peninsula on Wednesday, triggering an alert for tsunami, multiple reports said. The notification for a tsunami was, however, revoked later but the residents had fled to higher grounds. Evacuation operations are underway in some areas. The impact of the powerful earthquake was felt hundreds of miles away from the epicenter. Read on for more details.
According to reports, the quake hit 75 miles south of the city of Chignik at a depth of 6 miles. Soon, the US National Tsunami Warning Center issued an advisory for southern and coastal Alaska and the Aleutian Islands. The warning was revoked two hours after the quake hit. It was said that the West Coast and Canada have no threat from the tsunami.
The earthquake was followed by several aftershocks, the strongest of them measured at 5.7 on the Richter scale. No casualties were reported at the time of the press. A seismologist told AFP the quake was possibly a subduction zone quake, which happens after two tectonic plates converge. Frequently jolted by tremors, Alaska falls in the seismically active Pacific Ring of Fire.
An official from the Alaska Volcano Observatory told local media, "It's the interface, the plate boundary between where the Pacific plate thrusts underneath North America. A very standard type of earthquake in this area." A citizen, staying some 400 miles away from the epicenter, narrated the experience on msc-csem.org (a quake monitoring website). "Bed and curtains were going," they said.
