A magnitude 8.8 earthquake struck about 20 kilometers under the ocean off Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula Wednesday, causing widespread damage but no major casualties and sending a tsunami wave across the Pacific Ocean, The New York Times reports.
The quake occurred along a subduction zone, where Earth’s North American tectonic plate slides under the Pacific plate. These plates are floating in the mantle and move relative to each other over many years or centuries and build up pressure. When one slides under the other suddenly, as happened Wednesday, the Pacific plate pushes up and creates a tsunami wave.
The video explains:
- What a subduction zone is
- How tectonic plates cause earthquakes and tsunamis
- What makes a megathrust earthquake so dangerous
- Why the Ring of Fire is the world’s earthquake hotspot
The tsunami wave was only a few feet high when it reached Hawaii and Alaska and even less destructive in Oregon and California, but those on the Kamchatka Peninsula experienced a huge wave, the Times reported.
Videos from the area showed homes and other structures shaking and coastal buildings awash in seawater. The Russian geophysics service said in a statement that a volcano in the Kamchatka Peninsula began erupting after the quake.
