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Tsunami warnings in Hawaii, parts of California and Japan downgraded
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Tsunami warnings were dropped for most parts of South America, a day after an 8.8-magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of the Russian far east in the early hours of Wednesday.
Fears of a devastating tsunami in the US and Japan after one of the strongest earthquakes ever recorded struck Russia’s sparsely populated Kamchatka peninsula.
Authorities in Colombia, Ecuador and Peru this morning dropped the tsunami alerts, while in Chile, the country with the largest Pacific coastline in South America, the government kept the alert along most of the coastline. Chile’s interior minister Alvaro Elizade said waves reached a height of 1.1m in some places, and in one location reached 2.5m.
Several people were injured during the earthquake, but none seriously and no major damage was reported. However, one woman died in Japan after her car fell off the cliff while evacuating to higher ground.
Amidst the tsunami warnings, lava was seen coming from the Klyuchevskoy volcano on the peninsula as it began to erupt.
On Kamchatka, near the quake’s epicentre, residents fled inland as ports flooded, while cars jammed streets in Honolulu. Tsunamis are triggered by underwater earthquakes, which cause the seafloor to rise and drop, pushing huge volumes of sea water into waves.
New Zealand’s emergency management officials say coastlines of the country are experiencing strong currents and wave surges as tsunami activity reaches shores.
An alert broadcast to every cell phone this morning said the threat is likely to remain in place until at least midday.
Evacuations haven’t been ordered. But people throughout the South Pacific island nation are warned to stay out of the water and away from beaches, shorelines, harbors, rivers and estuaries.
New Zealand is about 9,656km from the quake’s epicenter. Officials warn that the first tsunami waves might not be the largest to arrive and people should treat the threat as real until the alert is canceled.
Russia’s Klyuchevskoy volcano has erupted on the Kamchatka peninsula, following a powerful earthquake in the Pacific on Wednesday.
Scientists described the “descent of burning hot lava” down the slopes of one of the world’s highest active volcanoes, hours after a huge 8.8-magnitude earthquake rocked the region and prompted tsunami waves in the Pacific.
Klyuchevskoy, which has erupted several times over recent years, is located approximately 450 km (280 miles) north of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, the regional capital.
More here.
In South America, three of the four countries with coastlines on the Pacific lifted the tsunami warnings.
Authorities in Colombia, Ecuador and Peru this morning announced the tsunami alerts were dropped. In Chile, the country with the largest Pacific coastline in South America, the government kept the alert along most of the coastline while lifting it in some areas where authorities said there are no longer risks.
Chile’s interior minister, Alvaro Elizalde, said that evacuation orders remain in place in areas with remaining alerts and classes will continue canceled on Thursday.
He said that waves reached a height of 1.1m in some places, and in one location reached 2.5m.
A woman in Japan has died while attempting to evacuate to high ground after a massive 8.8 earthquake triggered tsunami warnings across the Pacific region.
The 58-year-old woman died after her car veered off a national road and went off a cliff while she was trying to leave a coastal area yesterday in Kumano city of Mie Prefecture.
The woman succumbed to severe head injuries.
After receiving the tsunami warning, the woman reportedly sent a message to her family saying, “I’ll leave my car on higher ground. There’s an evacuation area”.
After a massive 8.8 magnitude earthquake rattled off the coast of Russia on Tuesday, officials in Hawaii warned residents a tsunami with potentially dangerous levels of inundation might be on the way.
When the National Weather Service updated Hawaii’s tsunami watch to a tsunami warning local officials called for evacuations of at-risk costal communities.
If you were to believe some posts on social media, the billionaire media mogul Oprah Winfrey — who lives in Maui part-time — was accused of callously refusing to let evacuees use her private road to shorten their travel time.
More here.
Millions of temporary evacuees returned home on Wednesday night after most of the tsunami warnings were lifted across the Pacific.
The 8.8-magnitude earthquake struck the sparsely populated Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia during the early hours of Wednesday, prompting tsunami warnings and evacuations across regions from the US to Japan.
Tsunami warnings rippled across the Pacific, triggering emergency responses and widespread disruption. In Peru, authorities shuttered 65 of the country’s 121 Pacific ports as a precaution, while flights to and from Hawaii’s Maui island were cancelled.
Japan, haunted by memories of the 2011 disaster, ordered nearly two million people to evacuate to higher ground.
By Wednesday evening, however, countries across the region began lifting or scaling back alerts, allowing coastal communities to return.
Professor Ilan Kelman from UCL’s department of Risk and Disaster Reduction has said the tsunamis across the Pacific Ocean mean we should have a greater awareness in the UK for these types of disasters.
“Tsunamis have happened around the UK in the past and we travel,” he says. “Tragically in the 2004 [Boxing Day] tsunami, 149 people affiliated with the UK died.
“Be aware that anywhere near water, tsunamis can happen. Tsunamis are relevant to the UK. Tsunamis are relevant to the British. We have coastlines and we travel. So please ensure that when you travel, and anyone living near the shore knows what to do when a tsunami may strike their location.”
Bryony Gooch reports.
The massive 8.8 earthquake reportedly caused limited damage in the sparsely populated Russian peninsula. In Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, the quake damaged a local kindergarten that was unoccupied.
A video released by a Russian media outlet showed a team of doctors at a cancer clinic on Kamchatka holding a patient and clutching medical equipment as the quake rocked an operating room.
Authorities on the sparsely populated Kuril Islands reported several waves flooded the fishing port of Severo-Kurilsk, the main city on the islands, and cut power supplies to the area. The port’s mayor said no major damage was reported.
The US National Tsunami Warning Centre, in its latest update, said a tsunami advisory continues for a reduced area in the Pacific region.
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