Strong 7.4 Quake Strikes Russia’s Far East

AFP/APP

Moscow: A powerful 7.4-magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of Russia’s Kamchatka peninsula on Saturday, the United States Geological Survey (USGS) reported.

The quake occurred 111 kilometres (69 miles) east of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, the administrative centre of the region, at a depth of 39.5 kilometres. The USGS initially recorded the tremor at 7.5 before revising it downward.

The Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre (PTWC) first cautioned that “hazardous” waves of up to one metre (3.3 feet) could hit parts of Russia’s eastern coastline. However, it later confirmed that the tsunami threat had passed.

In July, Kamchatka was rattled by one of the strongest quakes in recent history, a magnitude 8.8 event that triggered waves up to four metres high across the Pacific. That quake prompted mass evacuations from Hawaii to Japan, where authorities ordered nearly two million people to move to higher ground.

The July tremor was the largest since the devastating 2011 earthquake off Japan, which triggered a tsunami that killed more than 15,000 people.