The National Tsunami Center has canceled a tsunami warning that was triggered by a powerful earthquake off the coast of Alaska.
Watches have been canceled for Washington, Oregon, California, Hawaii, and British Columbia in Canada. Officials in Japan say there is no tsunami threat there.
Mickey Varnadao, a computer specialist with the warning center in Palmer, Alaska, said early Tuesday that an advisory remains in effect for parts of Alaska, from Kodiak Island to Prince William Sound.
Varnadao says the agency canceled the alert after waves failed to show up in coastal Alaska communities.
The quake struck about 175 miles southeast of Kodiak Island at a depth of 6 miles at 12:31 a.m. local time (4:31 a.m. ET) Tuesday, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) said. It was initially reported as magnitude-8.2 earthquake. There were no immediate reports of any damage.
The USGS had earlier said the first wave could reach Kodiak in Alaska at 1:45 a.m. local time (5:45 a.m. ET) and Neah Bay in Washington at 5:55 a.m. local time (8:55 a.m. ET).
Varnadao said the National Tsunami Center canceled the alert after waves failed to materialize on the Alaska coast.
Lt. Tim Putney, of the Kodiak Police Department, said: “We haven’t seen anything yet or had any reports of a wave.”
Authorities in Kodiak told people living under the 10-foot mark to move to higher ground. Putney said the town has several shelters above 100-foot.
Warnings from the National Weather Service sent to cellphones in Alaska soon after he quake said: “Emergency Alert. Tsunami danger on the coast. Go to high ground or move inland.”
People said on social media that the tremblor was felt hundreds of miles away in Anchorage.
Dozens of aftershocks followed the initial quake. John Bellini, a geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey's National Earthquake Information Center, says there have been more than two dozen aftershocks as of about 6:30 a.m. The biggest aftershock had a magnitude of 5.3.
Bellini says as more data comes in, better calculations can be made as to the magnitude. Earthquake waves take time to spread.
Beginning in the late 1990s, scientists at NOAA’s Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory began looking for a way to warn us about tsunami waves and how big they were likely to be once they made landfall off North America.
KING 5’s Glenn Farley interviews Dr. Eddie Bernard, who pushed for and oversaw this project. There was a tsunami as a result of the earthquake last night, which did create a tsunami of just ten inches in Crescent City, California and Kodiak Alaska.