earthquake

LIMA — Peru issued a tsunami alert on Tuesday following a massive 8.8-magnitude earthquake off the eastern coast of Russia, the Navy said.

It said analysis by the country’s National Tsunami Warning Center “triggers a tsunami alert along the Peruvian coast”.

“The event will be continuously monitored,” the navy’s Directorate of Hydrography and Navigation said on social media platform X.

The National Emergency Operations Center of the National Civil Defense Institute also said on X it was monitoring regions of the Peruvian coast.

The president of the country’s Geophysical Institute, Hernando Tavera, told AFP the tsunami “generated by this earthquake is expected to reach the Peruvian coast on Wednesday morning, with waves not expected to exceed three meters in height.”

The powerful quake struck off the Russian coast near the Kamchatka peninsula, injuring several people and prompting tsunami warnings across the Pacific, from Japan to Hawaii. — AFP

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TOKYO — Japan on Wednesday issued a tsunami warning for the country’s Pacific coast after a magnitude 8.8 earthquake struck off Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula in the morning, with waves of up to 50 centimetres (cm) recorded in parts of northern and eastern Japan, Kyodo News Agency reported.

The warning disrupted railway and air services along the coast and led the operator of the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant to halt the release of treated radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean.

The Japan Meteorological Agency has warned of tsunami waves of up to 3 metres reaching areas stretching from Hokkaido in northern Japan to Wakayama Prefecture in the west and the Ogasawara Islands in the south. The warning could remain in effect for the entire day, the agency said.

A 50 cm-tsunami was recorded at Ishinomaki Port in Miyagi Prefecture at 11.51 am, while a 40 cm-wave was detected in Oarai, Ibaraki Prefecture, at 11.38 am.

Tsunami waves of up to 30 cm were observed in Nemuro and Kushiro, eastern Hokkaido, and Ofunato and Kamaishi in Iwate Prefecture, northeastern Japan.

Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba vowed to take all possible measures to ensure the safety of the public, ordering ministries and agencies to mitigate any damage from the tsunami.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi told a hastily arranged press conference that the government is confirming the situation, while calling on people in areas covered by the warning to evacuate to higher ground.

The quake occurred at 8.24 am around 120 kilometres east-southeast of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky at a depth of about 20 km, according to the United States Geological Survey.

Tsunami waves measuring up to 4 metres were detected off southeastern Kamchatka, with several people injured, according to Russia’s Tass news agency.

The quake registered 2 on Japan’s seismic intensity scale of 7 in Hokkaido, the Japanese weather agency said.

The Japanese Defence Ministry dispatched patrol and fighter aircraft to the Pacific coast to gather information.

The tsunami warning prompted Sendai airport in Miyagi Prefecture, northeastern Japan, to close its runways, while JR East and JR Central halted train services near coastal areas.

JR Hokkaido also suspended services on the Hidaka and Senmo lines, with passengers and crew evacuating from trains.

At the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex, which is undergoing decommissioning following the 2011 quake-tsunami disaster, Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc. instructed workers to evacuate. — BERNAMA-KYODO

 

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WASHINGTON — Tsunami advisories remain in effect for the US states of California, Oregon and Washington following the magnitude 8.7 earthquake that struck off the coast of Kamchatka Peninsula, Sputnik/RIA Novosti reported, based on the latest data from the US National Tsunami Warning Center.

The earthquake struck at 23:24 GMT on Tuesday. The Kamchatka branch of the Geophysical Service of the Russian Academy of Sciences said in a statement on Wednesday that the earthquake’s magnitude was estimated at 8.7 and that it was the strongest earthquake in the Kamchatka seismic zone since 1952.

The US National Tsunami Warning Center has issued a tsunami warning for Aleutian Islands, Smalga Pass, Alaska to Attu, Alaska (including the Pribilof Islands). At the same time, tsunami advisories are in effect for California, including San Francisco Bay; Oregon, including the Columbia River estuary coast; and Washington state.

Tsunami advisories have also been issued for British Columbia and South Alaska and the Alaska Peninsula.

In its latest update, the United States Geological Survey (USGS) put the earthquake’s magnitude at 8.7, saying that it struck 126 kilometers (78 miles) southeast of the Russian city of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, at a depth of 18 kilometers.

The Japan Meteorological Agency estimated that the earthquake’s magnitude was 8 and issued a tsunami warning, saying that waves of up to three meters (9.8 feet) were expected.

The Russian Emergencies Ministry said on Wednesday morning that there were no casualties on Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula as a result of the magnitude 8.7 earthquake. — BERNAMA-SPUTNIK

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TOKYO — Tsunami alerts were issued across much of the Pacific on Wednesday after an 8.8 magnitude earthquake off Russia’s far east.

Here are key facts about tsunamis and the damage they can cause:

Shock of water

A tsunami is a shock of water that spreads through the sea, usually triggered by a strong earthquake beneath the ocean floor.

The sudden, violent movement of the Earth’s crust can thrust up or drive down a section of the seabed — with the rift displacing vast quantities of water that move as waves.

Tsunamis radiate in all directions from their source and can cover enormous distances, sometimes at the speed of a jet plane.

They are a rare phenomenon but can create dangerously powerful currents and cause deadly flooding in coastal areas.

Other causes

Large quakes are the main driver of tsunamis, but the phenomenon can also be sparked by other cataclysmic geographic events, such as volcanic eruptions and landslides.

In 1883, a volcano shattered the Pacific island of Krakatoa, causing a blast that could be heard 4,500 kilometres (2,800 miles) away, followed by a tsunami that killed around 30,000 people.

Large storms or a meteorite falling into the ocean can also be powerful enough to cause a tsunami, according to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

‘Harbour wave’

The word “tsunami” comes from the Japanese words for “harbour” and “wave”.

Tsunamis are sometimes referred to as “tidal waves” but experts say this is inaccurate because they are not related to tides.

At their point of generation, tsunamis have a relatively small wave height, with peaks far apart.

As the waves approach the shore they are compressed by the shelving of the sea floor, reducing the distance between the peaks and vastly increasing the height.

When they hit the coast, tsunami waves can strike repeatedly over several hours, or even days.

Roman historian

To those on the shore, the first sign of something amiss can be the retreat of the sea, which is followed by the arrival of large waves.

“The sea was driven back, and its waters flowed away to such an extent that the deep seabed was laid bare and many kinds of sea creatures could be seen,” wrote Roman author Ammianus Marcellinus of a tsunami that struck Alexandria in 365 AD.

“Huge masses of water flowed back when least expected, and now overwhelmed and killed many thousands of people… some great ships were hurled by the fury of the waves onto the rooftops.”

How much damage?

Several factors determine the height and destructiveness of a tsunami.

They include the size of the quake, the volume of displaced water, the topography of the sea floor and whether there are natural obstacles that dampen the shock.

The Pacific Ocean is particularly prone to earthquakes and therefore to tsunamis, but over the millennia tsunamis have occurred in many parts of the world.

The tsunami of December 2004 in the Indian Ocean was caused by a 9.1 magnitude earthquake off the Indonesian island of Sumatra.

It released energy equivalent to 23,000 of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima, according to the US Geological Survey (USGS). Around 220,000 people in 11 nations were killed, many of them thousands of kilometres from the epicentre. — AFP

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