LIHUE — A set of tremors, situated about seven minutes apart, shook things up in the Pacific Ocean Tuesday morning triggering tsunami warnings for Hawaii and the Mainland West Coast, however no damage has been reported.
The largest quake was a magnitude 7.9 earthquake hit just after midnight on Jan 23, 174 miles from Kodiak Island kicked off tsunami warnings in Alaska and Hawaii.
Kodiak Island located near the Aleutian Trench, which caused concern because quakes registering higher than a 7 on the Richter scale in the Aleutian Islands have generated the most impactful tsunamis in Hawaii.
“If you have a big earthquake in that gap, it’s pointed right at us and that is in just the right spot that it could be bigger than what we’re prepared for,” said Gerard Fryer, senior geophysicist with the center. “That’s the nightmare scenario.”
The earthquake itself triggered warnings out of the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center and Alaska cautioned “widespread hazardous tsunami waves” were possible and officials warned damage could occur.
Bouy 46410 was the culprit for that information, and it recorded a water displacement of 32 feet according to the National Weather Service, which triggered the warning.
The 32-foot wave never arrived, however and tsunami waves of between one and three feet were reported in Alaska, according to the center. The warnings for Hawaii were canceled just after 1 a.m., Tuesday.
The convergence of the Pacific plate and the North America plate is to blame for the M7.9 quake on Tuesday, according to USGS. The convergence triggered strike slip faulting that caused the quake.
Seven minutes after the Kodiak Island quake, a M 3.7 quake struck 36 miles off the coast of Honokaa. It was the fourth most powerful tremor to hit Hawaii in the last 24 hours, according to USGS.
In addition to the 3.7 magnitude Honokaa quake, another hit earlier in the same location that was a 1.8 magnitude. A M 1.7 tremor was recorded at Pahala and a M 2.1 quake hit in Kapauu within the same 24 hours.
Thousands of earthquakes occur annually in Hawaii, according to experts at USGS, and most of them are associated with active volcanoes.
Most are so small that they can only be detected by sensitive instruments. Some are strong enough to be felt on one or more of the islands, according to USGS experts.
While the tsunami warning was canceled shortly after being issued, officials with USGS and the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center say it’s a good time to go over tsunami evacuation plans.
“The job of everybody in a tsunami is to survive,” Fryer said. “Run it through in your mind — what are you going to do if there’s a tsunami warning? How are you going to act?”
Why no warning for the potentially real wave attack? At least surfers should be told, would be horrible to miss such an event!
I am quoted out of context in this story. The “pointed right at us” comment I made more than a year ago (when I still actually worked at PTWC!). I was talking specifically about an area 600 miles to the west, near Umnak Island, not about the vicinity of Kodiak Island. For an earthquake near Kodiak to produce flooding in Hawaii that is worse than what happened in 1946, it would have to exceed magnitude 9.2.