Tsunami warnings were issued for parts of Alaska after an earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 8.2 struck off the coast of the Alaska peninsula early Thursday.
The tremblor struck around 50 miles south of Perryville, a small town of 100 or so people around 500 miles to the south and west of Anchorage, Robert Sanders, a USGS geophysicist told NBC News.
“There could be damage and injuries from an event of this magnitude,” he said, adding that the sparsity of the population mitigated that risk but did not remove it.
“The biggest threat would be any potential tsunami risk,” he said.
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Tsunami warnings were put in place for parts of south Alaska, the Alaska Peninsula and the Aleutian Islands by the National Tsunami Warning Center. A tsunami advisory was also issued for southeast Alaska, but the National Weather Service said there was no tsunami threat to Anchorage.
“For other U.S. and Canadian Pacific coasts in North America, the level of tsunami danger is being evaluated,” it said in a bulletin.
The Alaska Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management tweeted that the State Emergency Operations Center “had been activated and is calling communities in the tsunami warning area.”
A tsunami watch was also issued for Hawaii by the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center, although it was later canceled.
Sanders said the earthquake was initially measured at 7.2 magnitude but later revised up to 8.2. That was not “an uncommon occurrence,” he said.
Two other earthquakes with preliminary magnitudes of 6.2 and 5.6 occurred in the same area within a half hour of the first one, according to the U.S. Geological Survey reported.
He added that in July 2020 a 7.8 magnitude earthquake happened in the same region.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
