Powerful quake in Russia causes tsunami, Japan & Hawaii order evacuations

30/7/2025 12:10

A magnitude 8.8 earthquake struck off Russia's Far Eastern Kamchatka Peninsula on Wednesday, damaging buildings and generating a tsunami of up to 4 metres that prompted warnings and evacuations stretching across the Pacific Ocean.



Several people were injured in the remote Russian region, while much of Japan's eastern seaboard - devastated by a powerful earthquake and tsunami in 2011 - was ordered to evacuate.



A tsunami with a height of 3-4 metres was recorded in parts of Kamchatka, said Sergei Lebedev, regional minister for emergency situations, urging people to move away from the shoreline.



The U.S. Geological Survey said the earthquake was shallow at a depth of 19.3 km, and was centred 119 km east-southeast of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, a city of 165,000. It revised the magnitude up from 8.0 earlier, and reported a strong aftershock of magnitude 6.9 soon after.