Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said Wednesday the threat of a significant tsunami hitting the United States after an 8.8 magnitude earthquake struck Russia’s Pacific Coast has passed.
Some advisories and warnings are still in effect: Much of the coastline of Chile is under the highest level of alert. Authorities are downgrading their warnings in Hawaii, Japan, and parts of Russia. Much of the West Coast, spanning California, Oregon, Washington state, and the Canadian province of British Columbia, is still under an advisory.
In response to a major tsunami threat, Noem told reporters that it “has passed completely,” adding that “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,” Noem told reporters while visiting Chile on Wednesday.
There is a tsunami advisory for Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties, the NWS said in a post on X at around 6:50 a.m. local time. An advisory for Los Angeles and Ventura counties has expired, it added.
“Whether an advisory is in effect or not, stay out of the water and harbors as currents will be strong,” the NWS said.
The Russian quake damaged buildings and injured several people in the remote Russian region, while much of Japan’s eastern seaboard was ordered to evacuate, as were parts of Hawaii. Russian scientists said the quake in Kamchatka was the most powerful to hit the region since 1952.
By the evening, Japan, Hawaii, and Russia had downgraded most of their tsunami warnings. But authorities in French Polynesia warned residents of several of the remote Marquesas Islands to move to higher ground and expect waves as high as 8 feet.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said there had been no casualties in Russia from the quake, crediting solid building construction and the smooth working of alert systems.
The Klyuchevskoy volcano on Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula began erupting later, a geological monitoring service said.
“A descent of burning hot lava is observed on the western slope. Powerful glow above the volcano, explosions,” the Russian Academy of Sciences’ United Geophysical Service said in a statement posted on social media.