7.7 quake off Russian Far East triggers no Pacific tsunami
An earthquake occurred late Monday afternoon off the Russian Far East but poses no threat of a tsunami in Hawaii, the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said.
The 7.7-magnitude quake struck at 5 p.m. Hawaii time about 102 miles east of Poronaysk in Sakhalin Island, the center said. Earlier reports set the magnitude at 7.3.
The quake occurred about 350 miles below the surface of the ocean, the center said. It was in the Sea of Okhotsk, west of the Kuril Islands that stretch from Hokkaido, Japan, to Kamchatka, Russia.
An 8.3-magnitude quake on the other side of the Kurils in November 2006 generated a tsunami that hit Japan and Hawaii with waves of a few feet high, but caused $10 million in damage to the harbor at Crescent City, Calif.