Alaska Earthquake Rocks Aleutian Islands, Prompts Brief Tsunami Warning
A powerful 6.8-magnitude earthquake struck near Alaska’s Aleutian Islands early Friday, prompting a tsunami alert that was subsequently canceled.
Although the quake was felt by many of the residents in the very remote area of Atka – a region about 1,000 miles south-west of Anchorage, Alaska, only a “small wave” was recorded reaching its shores.
“In Atka, they had a little bump of a wave, but nothing of any kind of a destructive power. Just a wave,” said Jeremy Zidek, a spokesman for the Alaska Department of Homeland Security.
According to the United States Geological Survey, the temblor, which was downgraded from an initial magnitude measurement of 7.1, was detected at 10:55 GMT and was located at a depth of 22 miles in the Pacific Ocean.
The coastal areas from the island of Unimak, the largest in the Aleutian archipelago, to the remote and sparsely populated island of Amchitka were the locations involved in the tsunami warning.
Authorities said in issuing the alert they did not expect a destructive tsunami in the Pacific region or Hawaii, although they said they were carefully monitoring a possible threat to the northwest coast of the mainland United States.
As of now, no injuries from any local or federal sources have been reported for this event.
Alaska Native News, weighing in on the quake, noted that the area “is frequented by earthquakes every day, although a majority of them have a magnitude less than this.”
