Russia's Earthquake Epicentre Kamchatka Is In Pacific Ring Of Fire: Why That Makes It More Dangerous
One of the world's strongest earthquakes struck Russia's Far East early Wednesday, an 8.8-magnitude temblor that caused small tsunami waves in Japan and Alaska and prompted warnings for Hawaii, North and Central America and Pacific islands south toward New Zealand.
Ports on the Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia near the quake's epicentre flooded as residents fled inland. Cars jammed streets and highways in Honolulu hours before tsunami waves were expected. Waves less than a foot above tide levels were observed in the Alaskan communities of Amchitka and Adak, said Dave Snider, tsunami warning coordinator with the National Tsunami Warning Center in Alaska.
White waves washed up to the shoreline on Japan's Hokkaido in the north and Ibaraki and Chiba, just northeast of Tokyo, in footage aired on Japan's NHK public television. A tsunami of 50 centimeters (1.6 feet) was detected at the Ishinomaki port in northern Japan, according to the Japan Meteorological Agency. That was the highest measurement so far among several locations around northern Japan. But higher waves were still arriving, said Shiji Kiyomoto, an earthquake and tsunami response official at JMA.
What is it?
Strongest earthquake at Kamchatka Peninsula since 1952
The quake was the strongest to hit this area on the Kamchatka Peninsula since 1952, according to the local branch of the Geophysical Survey of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The 9.0 quake on November 4, 1952, in Kamchatka caused damage but no reported deaths despite setting off 9.1-meter (30-foot) waves in Hawaii.
They said that while the situation 'was under control" there was a risk of aftershocks, which could last for up to a month and warned against visiting certain coastal areas.
Earlier in July, five powerful quakes — the largest with a magnitude of 7.4 — struck in the sea near Kamchatka. The largest quake was at a depth of 20 kilometers and was 144 kilometers east of the city of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky.
Most of the active volcanoes on the Ring of Fire are present in the Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia, the islands of Japan and Southeast Asia, and New Zealand.
Kamchatka Peninsula is part of Pacific Ring of Fire: Where is it?
According to the National Geographic, the Ring of Fire is a string of volcanoes and sites of seismic activity, or earthquakes, around the edges of the Pacific Ocean. Roughly 90 percent of all earthquakes occur along the Ring of Fire, and the ring is dotted with 75 percent of all active volcanoes on Earth.
The National Geographic states the Ring of Fire isn't quite a circular ring. It is shaped more like a 40,000-kilometer (25,000-mile) horseshoe. A string of 452 volcanoes stretches from the southern tip of South America, up along the coast of North America, across the Bering Strait, down through Japan, and into New Zealand. Several active and dormant volcanoes in Antarctica, however, 'close" the ring.
Kamchatka Peninsula is part of Pacific Ring of Fire: Why is it dangerous?
The Ring of Fire is the result of plate tectonics. Tectonic plates are huge slabs of Earth's crust, which fit together like pieces of a puzzle. The plates are not fixed but are constantly moving atop a layer of solid and molten rock called the mantle. Sometimes these plates collide, move apart, or slide next to each other. Most tectonic activity in the Ring of Fire occurs in these geologically active zones, according to the National Geographic.
'If you were to drain the water out of the Pacific Ocean, you would see a series of deep ocean trenches that run parallel to corresponding volcanic arcs along the Ring of Fire. These arcs create both islands and continental mountain ranges," it states.
Volcanoes are formed along this ring when one plate crashes under another into the mantle – a process called subduction. 'What's special about the Ring of Fire is that multiple oceanic plates in the Pacific have subduction boundaries there," Loÿc Vanderkluysen, a volcanologist at Drexel University in Philadelphia, told Live Science.
The movement of tectonic plates also leads to earthquakes. When one plate is shoved beneath the other, 'there's lots of kicking and screaming as the plates grind against one another. And so that's where the biggest earthquakes on our planet take place," Jeffrey Karson, a professor emeritus of tectonics at Syracuse University in New York, was quoted as saying by Live Science.
Massive 8.7 magnitude earthquake hits Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula triggering widespread tsunami warnings for Russia, Japan and US West coast. Residents evacuated from coastlines #Tsunamiwarning #tsunamialert #earthquake #earthquakerussia #KamchatkaPeninsula pic.twitter.com/FnrH0fbEHK — News18 (@CNNnews18) July 30, 2025
How much damage did the earthquake cause?
The quake at 8:25 am Japan time had a preliminary magnitude of 8.0, Japan and US seismologists said. The U.S. Geological Survey later updated its measurement to 8.8 magnitude and the USGS said the quake occurred at a depth of 20.7 kilometers.
The quake was centered about 119 kilometers east-southeast from the Russian city of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, which has a population of 180,000, on the Kamchatka Peninsula. Multiple aftershocks as strong as 6.9 magnitude followed.
The first tsunami wave hit the coastal area of Severo-Kurilsk, the main settlement on Russia's Kuril Islands in the Pacific, according to the local governor Valery Limarenko. He said residents were safe and staying on high ground until the threat of a repeat wave was gone.
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The quake caused damage to buildings and cars swayed in the streets in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, which also had power outages and mobile phone service failures. Russian news agencies quoting the regional Health Ministry saying several people sought medical help in Kamchatka after the earthquake, but no serious injuries were reported.
With inputs from AP, agencies
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News explainers Russia's Earthquake Epicentre Kamchatka Is In Pacific Ring Of Fire: Why That Makes It More Dangerous
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