Tsunami warnings across the Pacific rim were lifted on Wednesday, allowing millions of evacuees to return home after one of the strongest earthquakes ever recorded struck off Russia's Kamchatka peninsula. The 8.8-magnitude quake triggered warnings from Japan to the United States and Ecuador, with predictions of storm surges up to four metres.
In Japan, nearly two million people were ordered to higher ground before warnings were downgraded. The Fukushima nuclear plant was temporarily evacuated. The only reported fatality was a woman in Japan who drove her car off a cliff while trying to escape. In Chile, 1.4 million people were evacuated in what the interior ministry called 'perhaps the most massive evacuation ever carried out in our country', but no damage or victims were reported.
The Galápagos Islands experienced a sea level drop and sudden rise, but only a surge of just over a metre was recorded, causing no damage. 'Everything is calm, I'm going back to work,' said local resident Isabel Grijalva. The worst damage occurred in Russia, where a tsunami flooded the port of Severo-Kurilsk and submerged a fishing plant. Mayor Alexander Ovsyannikov reported water reached the town's second world war monument.
Russian scientists noted the Klyuchevskoy volcano erupted shortly after the quake. The US Geological Survey said the quake was among the ten strongest since 1900, with a 59% chance of an aftershock above 7.0 magnitude in the next week.
