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Hawaii was briefly under a tsunami watch early Tuesday morning following a magnitude-7.9 earthquake off Alaska.
The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center, which issued the watch at 11:43 p.m. Monday, canceled it at
1:10 a.m.
No alerts went to cellphones because a watch means only that a tsunami is possible, not likely or certain, officials said.
PTWC officials initially said that if tsunami waves were to affect the state, the estimated earliest arrival would have been 4:23 a.m.
The U.S. Geological Survey initially estimated the quake at magnitude 8.2
but downgraded it to
7.9 magnitude. The USGS said it struck at about
11:31 p.m. Hawaii time and was centered 161 miles southeast of Chiniak, Alaska, at a depth of about 15.5 miles. There have been several aftershocks, including one with a 5.6 magnitude.
The 7.9-magnitude earthquake prompted a tsunami warning for a large swath of coastal Alaska and British Columbia, while the U.S. West Coast was placed under a watch. The National Tsunami Center canceled that warning by 2:30 a.m., but officials said a tsunami advisory remained for part of the state.
There were no initial
reports of unusual waves in Alaska after 1:45 a.m., the earliest potential arrival time for the first tsunami.
The Associated Press
reported alerts from the
National Weather Service sent to cellphones in Alaska had warned, “Emergency Alert. Tsunami danger on the coast. Go to high ground or move inland.”
Tuesday’s brief scare for Hawaii came just 10 days
after the state’s Emergency Management Agency mistakenly sent out an incoming-missile alert to cellphones across the state.
The USGS also reported Tuesday morning that a magnitude-3.7 quake struck about 59 miles north of Hilo at 11:37 p.m. Monday at a depth of 47 miles.
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