Shallow magnitude 8.7 quake hit near Russia’s Kamchatka peninsula provoking warnings as far away as New Zealand and California
Follow it live: Japan and Pacific braces for tsunami waves
An 8.7-magnitude earthquake has triggered a series of tsunami warnings and evacuation orders stretching across Russia, Japan, the US west coast and parts of the Pacific, after the powerful and shallow quake hit near Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula on Wednesday morning.
The US Geological Survey said the earthquake struck at a depth of 19.3km (12 miles), and was centred 126km (80 miles) east-southeast of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, a city of 165,000 along the coast of Russia’s Avacha Bay. It revised the magnitude up from 8.0 earlier.
Early reports of damage have come from Russia, with Kamchatka governor Vladimir Solodov describing the quake in a post on Telegram as “serious and the strongest in decades of tremors”. A kindergarten in the area had been damaged, he said.
