Posts Tagged ‘United States Geological Survey’
Ring Of Fire Earthquake Hits Russia And US prompting tsunami warning
Tremors are felt from thousands of miles away in Moscow as two quakes strike in the turbulent Ring Of Fire region
Two earthquakes have hit the Ring of Fire area, registering magnitudes of 8.2 and 5.7 and prompting a tsunami warning.
Moscow felt tremors from the more powerful quake, causing some people to evacuate buildings despite the epicentre being more than 4,000 miles to the east.
The US Geological Survey said the epicentre of Thursday’s quake was in the Kuril-Kamchatka arc, one of the most seismically active regions in the world.
Marina Kolomiyets, from the Russian Academy of Sciences, said it originated 375 miles under the sea bed in the Sea of Okhotsk, just off Russia’s east coast and north of Japan.
A tsunami warning for the Sakhalin and the Kuril islands was issued, but lifted soon afterwards.
Tremors are extremely rare in Moscow, with the last recorded instance in 1977. Witnesses also reported feeling the tremors across Siberia.
“There were repercussions of the quake in Nizhny Novgorod, Moscow and Europe, in particular Romania,” said Anatoly Tsygankov from Russia’s Rosgidromet environmental monitoring service.
“Practically the whole continent shook.”
No casualties have been reported.
A second, smaller 5.7 magnitude quake also struck the US.
It hit northern California’s Plumas County at 8.47pm local time and was centred six miles west of Greenville.
Sacramento television station KCRA-TV said the tremors were felt in the city, some 145 miles south of the epicentre.
Eight aftershocks ranging from 2.6 to 3.5 magnitude were also recorded. So far, no injuries or damage have been reported.
The Ring of Fire is a horseshoe-shaped area located around the edge of the Pacific Ocean.
The vast majority of the world’s volcanoes and earthquakes occur in the area because of the movement and collisions of the Earth’s tectonic plates.
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Magnitude 7.4 quake strikes in sea off Tonga -USGS
A magnitude 7.4 earthquake struck in the sea 177 (285 km) miles southwest of Tonga’s capital Nuku’alofa, the U.S. Geological Survey reported on Thursday.
It said the quake was recorded at a depth of 106 miles and had struck at 1719 GMT.
The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center on its website said that no “destructive Pacific-wide tsunami” was expected.
7.8 Earthquake near Iran-Pakistan border kills 40
A major earthquake hit a region near the Iran-Pakistan border today, reportedly killing at least 40 people in the second deadly quake in the area in less than a week.
The state television network in Iran, Press TV, is reporting 40 killed in the latest quake, which hit less than a week after a quake in Iran killed at least 37 people.
The country’s seismological centre has pegged Tuesday’s earthquake at a magnitude 7.5, and said it was centred near Saravan, a sparsely populated area about 48 kilometres from the Pakistani border.
The U.S. Geological Survey put the preliminary magnitude at 7.8 and at a depth of 15.2 kilometres.
The quake was felt as far away as New Delhi, and the Gulf cities of Dubai and Bahrain.
Across the Gulf, highrise buildings swayed and officials ordered evacuations. Dubai has the world’s tallest tower, the 828-metre Burj Khalifa.
Last week’s 6.1-magnitude quake hit about 96 kilometres southeast of Bushehr, the site of Iran’s reactor.