Brief tsunami advisory after 7.2 earthquake off Alaska coast

Updated: Jul 16, 2023 / 08:47 AM CDT

FILE- This file photo provided by Andy Varner, city administrator for Sand Point, Alaska, shows the city’s harbor on June 7, 2016. A 7.2 magnitude earthquake triggered a brief tsunami advisory for southern Alaska, monitoring bodies reported late Saturday, July 15, 2023. The United States Geological Survey wrote in a social media post that the earthquake occurred 106 kilometers (65.8 miles) south of Sand Point, Alaska, at 10:48 p.m. Saturday.(Andy Varner/City of Sand Point via AP, File)

(AP) — A 7.2 magnitude earthquake triggered a brief tsunami advisory for southern Alaska late Saturday, but the advisory was canceled about an hour later, monitoring bodies reported.

The earthquake was felt widely throughout the Aleutian Islands, the Alaskan Peninsula and Cook Inlet regions, according to the Alaska Earthquake Center.

In Kodiak, Alaska, sirens warned of a possible tsunami and sent people driving to shelters late at night, according to video posted to social media.

The United States Geological Survey wrote in a social media post that the earthquake occurred 65.8 miles south of Sand Point, Alaska, at 10:48 p.m. Saturday. The quake initially was reported as 7.4 magnitude but downgraded to 7.2 soon after.

The U.S. National Weather Service sent a tsunami advisory saying the quake occurred at a depth of 13 miles. The agency canceled the advisory about an hour after the first alert.

Before the cancellation, the National Weather Service in Anchorage, Alaska, tweeted that the tsunami advisory applied to coastal Alaska from Chignik Bay to Unimak Pass, but Kodiak Island and the Kenai Peninsula were not expected to be impacted.

The Hawaii Emergency Management Agency said shortly after the tsunami warning went out that there was no threat to the islands.

There were an estimated eight aftershocks in the same area of Alaska, including one measuring 5.0 magnitude within three minutes of the original earthquake, KTUU-TV reported.

Residents were advised not to reoccupy hazard zones without clearance from local emergency officials, KTUU reported.

Small sea level changes were still possible, KTUU reported.

Alaska experiences thousands of earthquakes each year, most of which are too deep and too small to be felt. It is the U.S.’s most seismically active state and location of the second-largest earthquake ever recorded, according to the Alaska Earthquake Center. In 1964, a magnitude 9.2 earthquake in Prince William Sound caused extensive damage throughout south-central Alaska.

The temblor late Saturday occurred in the same region as several other earthquakes over 7 magnitude in the past few years, The Center said via Twitter.

“The once quiet “Shumagin Gap” isn’t so quiet anymore!” the tweet said.