The 7.9 earthquake that struck early Tuesday morning, 180 miles off the Kodiak coast was felt widely across Alaska, even in the Interior. But the Alaska Earthquake Center has received no reports of damage.
State Seismologist Michael West said that’s likely because the earthquake was far from shore, in the middle of the Gulf of Alaska.
“From the perspective of earthquake shaking, we were helped greatly by the fact that this earthquake was considerably offshore,” he said. “So everybody was at least a couple of hundred miles away from this earthquake.”
West said the earthquake was an interesting one. It happened slightly farther out to sea than the massive 1964 earthquake but it wasn’t caused by the same mechanism that triggered that event. Instead of moving up and down, like the 1964 quake, the earth moved from side to side. It’s called a strike-slip earthquake.
And West said that could explain why the tsunami waves were pretty small.
“It is fair to say that historically there tends to be less tsunami activity with earthquakes of that style,” he said.
West said it’s relatively unusual for this type of earthquake to be so large.
“This is certainly on the larger end of what we see for those types of earthquakes,” he said. It’s by no means unprecedented or anything, but it certainly is one that will garner a lot of attention scientifically.”
West said aftershocks from the earthquake will likely continue for years. He said the vast majority of the early aftershocks will be in the four or five magnitude range, but some could be larger.
Annie Feidt is the broadcast managing editor at Alaska Public Media. Reach her at afeidt@alaskapublic.org. Read more about Annie here.
