Southern Kamchatka shifted nearly two meters (almost 7 feet) in July 30 quake

The southern Kamchatka Peninsula shifted nearly two meters (about 6.6 feet) southeast after a massive earthquake on July 30, Russian scientists reported. The 8.8-magnitude earthquake — among the 10 strongest in recorded history and the largest worldwide since 2011 — struck off Russia’s far eastern coast and generated tsunami warnings across the Pacific. While the Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky area experienced more modest shifts of roughly 50 centimeters (about 20 inches), the southern peninsula’s nearly two-meter displacement highlights the earthquake’s unprecedented power in an already seismically active region.

“We conducted preliminary calculations based on geodynamic observation results. It turns out that we all moved southeast quite substantially. Maximum coseismic displacements after the July 30 earthquake were observed in the southern part of the peninsula. There they amounted to nearly two meters,” the regional branch of the Unified Geophysical Service of the Russian Academy of Sciences stated in its Telegram channel.

The quake triggered the first recorded eruption of Krasheninnikov volcano in 600 years and also caused an eruption of the Klyuchevskaya Sopka, Eurasia’s tallest active volcano. Despite the earthquake’s magnitude, no fatalities occurred. The resulting tsunami caused damage to port facilities and a fish processing plant in Severo-Kurilsk but proved less destructive than initially feared.