WELLINGTON — Tsunami warnings remained in place in New Zealand and Chile on Thursday, one day after an 8.8 magnitude earthquake off the coast of Russia sent waves across the Pacific.
Parts of Russia, Japan, Hawaii and the US West Coast were on alert throughout Wednesday, but warnings have been lifted as the danger appeared to be subsiding in most places.
Authorities in New Zealand renewed an advisory late in the afternoon that urged people to stay out of the water and away from beaches.
Officials said rebounding tsunami activity from South America meant that strong and unusual currents could continue for another 24 hours, a directive from authorities said.
Emergency management officials said coastlines of New Zealand were experiencing strong currents and wave surges in the early hours of Thursday as tsunami activity reached shores.
In the latest alert, officials removed a stretch of the country’s coastline from the area affected by rough seas caused by tsunami waves.
No large tsunami waves have been recorded in New Zealand, which is 9,656 kilometres from the quake's epicentre, but some areas registered surges 30 to 40 centimetres larger than usual. Two thirds of New Zealanders live within three miles of the ocean.
Those responsible for New Zealand's national warning system, which broadcasts alerts to every mobile phone in the country with a loud siren sound, defended its use on Thursday after a glitch caused one alert to be sent in error repeatedly throughout the night.
Emergency Management Minister Mark Mitchell said the system's shortcomings would be investigated.
In South America, three of the four countries with coastlines on the Pacific lifted the tsunami warnings.
Authorities in Colombia, Ecuador and Peru announced on Wednesday that tsunami alerts had been dropped.
In Chile, the country with the largest Pacific coastline in South America, the government kept the alert along most of the coastline while lifting it in some areas where authorities said there are no longer risks.
Chile's Interior Minister, Álvaro Elizalde, said late Wednesday that evacuation orders remain in place in areas with remaining alerts and classes will continue cancelled on Thursday.
He said that waves reached a height of 1.1 meters in some places, and in one location reached 2.5 meters.
Chile is highly vulnerable to earthquakes and tsunamis.
US Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem said the threat of a major tsunami hitting the United States "has passed completely."
Noem, speaking in Chile where she is attending meetings with officials, told reporters in the capital, Santiago: "We're in really good shape right now. We were fully deployed and ready to respond if necessary, but grateful that we didn’t have to deal with the situation that this could have been."
A spokesperson for Alaska's state emergency management agency, Jeremy Zidek, said in a text that no damage has been reported.
The community of Adak recorded the largest tsunami wave in Alaska at 2.7 feet, or less than a meter.
"I think what really surprised us, given the magnitude of that earthquake on Kamchatka, is that we didn't feel a thing," Adak City Manager Breck Craig said. "The bad thing is, that it might be our turn next."
Wednesday's 8.8-magnitude quake was among the four strongest earthquakes this century and among the eight strongest since 1900, according to the USGS.
The earthquake occurred along the Pacific Ring of Fire, the ring of seismic faults around the Pacific Ocean where most of the world's earthquakes occur.
The 2011 Japan quake and the 2004 earthquake off Indonesia were 9.1 magnitude, and a 2010 earthquake in Chile also was recorded at 8.8 magnitude. — Euronews
