A 7.8 magnitude earthquake was recorded in Alaska on Wednesday, about 800 km southwest of its largest city, Anchorage, causing a tsunami warning to be issued for the Alaska Peninsula and southern this American state.
The tidal wave alert concerns an area 300 km in radius around the epicenter of the earthquake located 90 km south of Perryville, according to the US Geological Survey, the American geology center.
Danger assessment for the American and Canadian coasts
"On the basis of the preliminary parameters of the earthquake (…) dangerous tsunami waves are possible for the coasts located up to more than 400 km from the epicenter of the earthquake", affirmed the center of alert of the Pacific for tsunamis.
"For the other American and Canadian coasts in North America, the level of danger of the tsunami is being evaluated", he added.
A tremor felt up to 650 km from the epicenter
The earthquake was felt for hundreds of kilometers around.
“The bed and the curtains came and went. I felt it like a very long earthquake, ”said a witness in Homer, Alaska, nearly 650 km from the epicenter, quoted on the earthquake monitoring website msc-csem.org.
A seismically active zone
Alaska is part of the seismically active Pacific Ring of Fire stretching from the Gulf of Alaska to the Russian Kamchatka Peninsula.
On March 27, 1964, a 9.2 magnitude earthquake, the most violent ever recorded in the United States and the world, struck the Anchorage region. It had lasted several minutes and caused a destructive tidal wave across the entire American West Coast, killing more than 250 people in total.
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