Tremors 'strongest in decades,' governor warns
(Reuters) -- A powerful magnitude-8.6 earthquake struck off Russia's Far Eastern Kamchatka Peninsula on Wednesday, sparking tsunami warnings, prompting evacuations and causing some damage, officials said.
"Today's earthquake was serious and the strongest in decades of tremors," Kamchatka Gov. Vladimir Solodov said in a video posted on the Telegram messaging app. He added that according to preliminary information there were no injuries, but a kindergarten was damaged.
The U.S. Geological Survey said the earthquake was shallow at a depth of 19.3 km, and was centered about 125 km east-southeast of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, a city of 165,000 along the coast of Avacha Bay. It revised the magnitude up from 8.0 earlier.
An evacuation order for the small town of Severo-Kurilsk, south of the peninsula, was declared due to the tsunami threat following the earthquake, Sakhalin Gov. Valery Limarenko said on Telegram.
