Tsunami
alerts from Japan to the US after powerful earthquake sparks warnings across
Pacific
Shallow
magnitude 8.8 quake hit near Russia’s Kamchatka peninsula provoking warnings as
far away as New Zealand and California
Gavin
Blair in Tokyo, Kate Lamb and agencies
Wed 30
Jul 2025 02.06 BST
A
powerful 8.8-magnitude earthquake has triggered a series of tsunami warnings
and evacuation orders stretching across Japan, the US west coast and parts of
the Pacific, after the shallow quake hit near Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula on
Wednesday, with reports of waves up to four metres high in the remote region.
The
earthquake, one of the strongest ever recorded, struck at a depth of 19.3km (12
miles) and was centred 126km (80 miles) east-southeast of
Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, a city along Russia’s Avacha Bay, the US Geological
Survey said.
A tsunami
with a height of 3 to 4 metres was recorded in parts of Kamchatka, Sergei
Lebedev, regional minister for emergency situations said, with several injured.
“Unfortunately,
there are some people injured during the seismic event. Some were hurt while
running outside, and one patient jumped out of a window. A woman was also
injured inside the new airport terminal,” Oleg Melnikov, regional health
minister, told Russia’s TASS state news agency.
“All
patients are currently in satisfactory condition, and no serious injuries have
been reported so far,” he added.
Kamchatka
governor Vladimir Solodov described the quake in a post on Telegram as “serious
and the strongest in decades of tremors”. A kindergarten in the area had also
been damaged, he said.
The US
Tsunami Warning System issued a warning of “hazardous tsunami waves” within the
next three hours along some coasts of Russia, Japan, Alaska and Hawaii. A
tsunami watch was also in effect for the US island territory of Guam and
Micronesia. The US Tsunami Warning Center said waves as high as 3 metres could
also hit Ecuador, while sirens blared in Hawaii warning people to leave coastal
areas.
In Japan,
much of the country’s eastern seaboard - devastated by a powerful earthquake
and tsunami in 2011 - was ordered to evacuate. Officials said more than 900,000
residents in 133 municipalities along Japan’s Pacific coast were under
evacuation orders.
“Those
near the coast should evacuate immediately to higher ground or safe buildings
in the areas covered by the tsunami warning from Hokkaido to Wakayama
Prefecture [hundreds of kilometres to the south],” said Japan’s chief cabinet
secretary, Yoshimasa Hayashi, “Please be aware that after the initial wave,
second and third waves of tsunamis can be even higher.”
The Japan
Weather Agency upgraded its warning, saying it expected tsunami waves of up to
3m, but only waves of 40cm have been recorded so far.
The Japan
Meteorological Agency said a tsunami as high as 40cm had been detected in 16
locations as the waves moved south along the Pacific coast from Hokkaido to
just northeast of Tokyo. Officials urged caution, saying that bigger waves
could come later.
Workers
at the Fukushima nuclear plant, which went into meltdown after being hit by the
2011 tsunami, have been evacuated, although no abnormalities have been observed
at the site.
Wednesday’s
quake struck about 250km (160 miles) away from Hokkaido, Japan’s northernmost
of the country’s four big islands, and was felt only slightly, according to
Japan’s NHK television.
Factory
workers and residents in Japan’s northern Hokkaido evacuated to a hill
overlooking the ocean, footage from broadcaster TBS showed.
“Please
evacuate quickly. If you can move quickly to higher ground and away from the
coast,” a newscaster on Japanese public broadcaster NHK said.
The
National Tsunami Warning Center, based in Alaska, issued a tsunami warning for
parts of the Alaska Aleutian Islands, and a watch for portions of the west
coast, including California, Oregon, and Washington, and Hawaii.
The
advisory also includes a vast swath of Alaska’s coast line, including parts of
the panhandle.
A
University of Tokyo seismologist Shinichi Sakai told NHK that a distant
earthquake could cause a tsunami that affects Japan if its epicentre is
shallow.
Kamchatka
and Russia’s Far East sit on the Pacific Ring of Fire, a geologically active
region that is prone to earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. Japan, also part of
the active seismic zone, is one of the world’s most quake-prone countries.
Earlier
in July, five powerful quakes – the largest with a magnitude of 7.4 – struck in
the sea near Kamchatka. The largest quake was at a depth of 20km and was 144km
(89 miles) east of the city of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, which has a population
of 180,000.
On 4
November 1952, a magnitude 9.0 quake in Kamchatka caused damage but no reported
deaths despite setting off 9.1m (30-foot) waves in Hawaii
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