A powerful magnitude 7.8 earthquake struck off the east coast of Russia’s remote Kamchatka Peninsula early Friday morning, prompting a brief tsunami advisory for Alaska’s Aleutian Islands that was later canceled.
According to the US Geological Survey, the earthquake struck at 6:58 a.m. Friday, with its epicenter positioned roughly 80 miles offshore from Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky. Seismologists recorded the event at a shallow depth of approximately 12 miles below the seafloor.
Russian authorities reported no immediate damage, though an estimated 241,000 people felt strong shaking across the sparsely populated region. The earthquake was followed by a series of aftershocks reaching magnitudes up to 5.8.
The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center initially issued a tsunami threat assessment but later determined there was no danger to Hawaii or the Pacific coasts of the United States and Canada. A tsunami advisory for Alaska’s western Aleutian Islands was canceled by evening.
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“Based on all available data, a destructive Pacific-wide tsunami is not expected and there is no tsunami threat to Hawaii,” Pacific Tsunami Warning Center officials said.
The earthquake is another major aftershock from the historic magnitude 8.8 quake that struck the same region on July 29, ranking as the sixth-strongest earthquake ever recorded by modern instruments. That earlier quake triggered Pacific-wide tsunami warnings and caused significant damage to the Kuril Islands.
Read: Tsunami Warnings Spread As Largest Quake Since 2011 Hits Russia
The Kamchatka Peninsula sits along the volatile “Ring of Fire,” where the Pacific Plate slides beneath the Okhotsk Plate, making it one of the world’s most seismically active regions. The area has experienced an unprecedented sequence of major earthquakes this year, including a magnitude 7.4 quake on July 20.
Scientists continue monitoring the ongoing aftershock sequence, which has produced at least 2,161 tremors since the July megaquake struck the region.
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