Tsunami warning canceled after earthquake off Alaska
July 22, 2020
An earthquake with a magnitude of at least 7.4 struck the Alaskan peninsula on Wednesday, the GFZ German Research Center for Geosciences said.
The US Geological Survey put the quake's magnitude at 7.8 and said it hit at 0612 UTC about 804 kilometers (500 miles) southwest of Anchorage, Alaska's largest city, and around 96 kilometers (60 miles) south-southeast of the remote settlement of Perryville.
The quake triggered a tsunami warning for areas in south Alaska, the Alaska Peninsula and the Aleutian Islands within 300 kilometers of the epicenter. The quake was at a depth of 10 km (6 miles), GFZ reported.
The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center later canceled the tsunami warning it had issued.
Tremors felt hundreds of kilometers away
The shallow quake was felt hundreds of kilometers away.
"Bed and curtains were going. Felt like a very long quake!" one witness in Homer, Alaska, over 600 kilometers from the epicenter, said on the quake monitoring website msc-csem.org.
Alaska is part of the seismically active Pacific Ring of Fire.
The peninsula was hit by a 9.2-magnitude earthquake in March 1964 – the strongest ever recorded in North America. It devastated Anchorage and created a tsunami that reached the Gulf of Alaska, the US west coast, and Hawaii.
More than 250 people were killed in that natural disaster.
This article has been updated to reflect the cancellation of the tsunami warning issued by the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center.
sms/dr (AFP, Reuters)