One of the most powerful earthquakes in the past decade struck Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula: a magnitude 8.8 earthquake struck the seafloor east of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky. It wasn’t just a single point on a map: USGS models show the quake ruptured a fault zone about 500 km long and 150 km wide, caused by the massive Pacific Plate diving beneath the North American Plate in one of Earth’s fastest-moving subduction zones. The region had been shaking for 10 days, with over 50 earthquakes of magnitude 5.0+ preceding the mainshock, including one of magnitude 7.4. And it didn’t stop there: dozens of aftershocks followed, including events of magnitude 6.9 and 6.3. This area, part of the Kuril-Kamchatka subduction zone, has a long history of megaquakes, including a magnitude 9.0 earthquake in 1952 that occurred just 30 kilometers away. The seismic history is significant. With 80 mm/year of tectonic movement, this region has accumulated over 6 meters of deformation since 1952, now partially released. The earthquake caused tsunami waves several meters high across much of the Pacific Ocean, as far as the Americas.
