The strongest earthquake in the United States in the last half century produced an intense shaking, but did not cause significant damage in the sparsely populated region of Alaska where it occurred, authorities said.
It was an 8.2 magnitude earthquake that struck around 10:15 p.m. Wednesday and struck off the southern coast of the Alaska Peninsula, nearly 500 miles (800 kilometers) southwest of Anchorage.
According to the United States Geological Survey, the earthquake occurred about 96 kilometers (60 miles) off the coast and 46 kilometers (29 miles) below the surface of the North Pacific Ocean.
On its website, the Alaska Seismic Center indicated that it was the largest earthquake in the United States since the one that occurred in the Aleutian Islands in 1965, of magnitude 8.7.
A year earlier, the 9.2 magnitude Good Friday Earthquake devastated parts of Anchorage and other Alaska communities. That earthquake and subsequent tsunami killed 131 people from Alaska to California.
Wednesday’s quake produced an intense shake, but the director of Alaska’s Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management said Thursday that no major damage was reported anywhere in the nation’s largest state.
“If that earthquake had happened in Anchorage or in Los Angeles, you can imagine the loss of life and property damage and all that, but so far, everything is going well,” said director Bryan Fisher.
He has been working for the agency for 26 years and this has been the biggest earthquake he has ever experienced.
“I assumed the worst, that there was going to be widespread catastrophic damage,” he said.
But the calls that were made to coastal communities while they were being evacuated due to the possibility of a tsunami could be heeded, a good initial sign. Additionally, local officials reported that they did not see any significant structural damage.
Due to the duration of the ground shaking, up to two minutes in some places, glasses or plates were expected to break and objects to fall from pantries and refrigerators.
“But that the roads have not collapsed, and that there has not been a tsunami, it has been incredible,” said Fisher. “It is a true miracle.”
A popular saying has it that earthquakes don’t kill people, buildings do, said Peter Haeussler, a research geologist with the US Geological Survey.
“As this earthquake occurred so far from the coast, in the middle of nowhere and in places where no one lives, the probability of damage to buildings and people being injured is almost nil,” he explains. Haeussler.
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