Thursday, December 20, 2018

Powerful, Shallow 7.4 Quake Hits Off Kamchatka, Russia



Extremely powerful and shallow M7.4 earthquake hits off Kamchatka, Russia



A major earthquake with a magnitude of 7.4 struck off Russia’s sparsely populated far east on December 20, 2018, but officials said the threat of a tsunami had passed and no damage was reported.

The quake off Russia’s Kamchatka peninsula, which was initially measured at magnitude 7.8 by the United States Geological Survey (USGS), before being revised downwards, struck 82 km (50 miles) west of Nikolskoye at a depth of 9 km.
The Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre at first said hazardous tsunami waves from the earthquake were possible within 300 km of the epicentre along the coasts of Russia, but later said the threat of tsunami had passed.
Russian RIA and TASS news agencies, citing officials at the local Emergencies Ministry, also said there was no threat of a tsunami following the quake. No damage was reported, they said.
The December 20, 2018 M7.3 earthquake east of Kamchatka peninsula, Russia, occurred as the result of oblique faulting in the northern Pacific Ocean, near the junction of the Kuril-Kamchatka and Alaska-Aleutian oceanic trenches. The largest nearby historic event in the Alaska-Aleutian system was a M7.0 earthquake to the east of today’s event in August 1925.

No comments: