Tsunami alerts for US, Japan, Philippines after massive Russia earthquake

Tsunami waves have hit parts of Russia and Japan after a massive earthquake off the Russian coast, with alerts issued for dozens of other countries, including the United States and the Philippines.

Potentially hazardous waves were expected in parts of the US, much of coastal Latin America and numerous Asian and Pacific island states later on Wednesday.

Waves up to 4 metres high (13 feet) have already struck Russia’s far-eastern Kamchatka region, said Sergei Lebedev, the regional minister for emergency situations, following the 8.8-magnitude quake, one of the largest on record.

Severo-Kurilsk, a seaport town in the Sakhalin region in the northern Kuril Islands, was flooded, forcing the evacuation of its 2,000 residents, Russia’s Ministry of Emergencies and Disaster Relief said.

Videos posted on Russian social media showed buildings in the town submerged in water, as authorities declared a state of emergency throughout the North Kuril District. District Mayor Alexander Ovsyannikov said there had been enough time to evacuate everyone on the impacted islands. “All the people are in the tsunami safety zone,” he said at a crisis meeting.

The US Tsunami Warning Centers said waves as high as 3 metres (9.8 feet) could hit Ecuador and Russia, while waves of 1 to 3 metres (3.3-9.8ft) were possible in Hawaii, Chile, Peru, Costa Rica, Japan and some Pacific islands.

“This is a subduction zone setting that has the potential to generate large tsunamis,” Nathan Bangs, a research professor at the University of Texas Institute for Geophysics, told media. “It is similar to other settings that have generated large tsunamis in recent years that followed earthquakes, such as Sumatra in 2004 and Tohoku in 2011.”

The US National Weather Service issued tsunami “warnings” for the state of Hawaii, Alaska’s Aleutian Islands and parts of California, as well as lower-level tsunami advisories for parts of Washington and Oregon, with waves expected to arrive from the late afternoon on Wednesday.

A less serious tsunami watch was in place for the entire US West Coast.