A file photo showing an aerial view of South Kuril Islands and coastline in Kamchatka region, Russia. Anadolu | Anadolu | Getty Images
A magnitude 8.8 earthquake struck off Russia’s Far Eastern Kamchatka Peninsula on Wednesday, generating a tsunami of up to 4 metres (13 feet), damaging buildings and prompting warnings and evacuations that stretched across the Pacific Ocean.
Several people were injured in the remote Russian region, while much of Japan’s eastern seaboard – devastated by a powerful earthquake and tsunami in 2011 – was ordered to evacuate.
“Today’s earthquake was serious and the strongest in decades of tremors,” Kamchatka Governor Vladimir Solodov said in a video posted on the Telegram messaging app.
A tsunami with a height of 3-4 metres (10-13 feet) was recorded in parts of Kamchatka, said Sergei Lebedev, regional minister for emergency situations, urging people to move away from the shoreline.
The U.S. Geological Survey said the earthquake was shallow at a depth of 19.3 km (12 miles), and was centred 119 km (74 miles) east-southeast of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, a city of 165,000. It revised the magnitude up from 8.0 earlier, and reported a strong aftershock of magnitude 6.9 soon after.