Major’ damage to Anchorage area after severe magnitude-7 earthquake in Alaska
ANCHORAGE — An intense earthquake struck the Anchorage area Friday morning, causing severe shaking and damage and triggering fears of a tsunami.
The magnitude-7 quake occurred at 8:29 a.m., local time, the epicenter just north of Anchorage. Moments later, the National Weather Service issued a tsunami warning for Cook Inlet and South Kenai Peninsula. The warning was canceled shortly after 10 a.m.
The Anchorage Police Department said the earthquake caused “major infrastructure damage” across the city, which is home to more than 294,000 people.
“Many homes and buildings are damaged,” the department said in a statement Friday morning. “Many roads and bridges are closed. Stay off the roads if you don’t need to drive.”
Police officers were dispatched across the region to handle “multiple situations,” the department said, although it did not elaborate beyond saying it was working with the school district to check on children there.
After the quake, Alaska state troopers were “responding to calls for service and unconfirmed reports of damage,” said Jonathon Taylor, a spokesman for the state’s Department of Public Safety.
Former Alaska governor Sarah Palin tweeted that while her “family is intact,” their “house is not.”
The Anchorage School District did not report damage to its buildings but said that parents could pick up children “when they feel it is safe to do so.”
Linton Thompson, the principal of Sand Lake School, was at a training with 50 other elementary school principals at Wayland Baptist Church when the earthquake began. He and many others ran outside, while others sheltered under desks in the conference room where the training was being held. When the shaking stopped, “every principal in that building went 100 different ways,” Thompson said.
The earthquake hit as students across Anchorage were on their way to school, about 30 minutes before classes would start.
The University of Alaska Anchorage closed its campus on Friday after the earthquake, urging all nonessential personnel to leave and warning people to stay away from the campus.
Chancellor Cathy Sandeen posted online that while the university sustained some damage, there was “no word of injuries, thankfully.” She also posted a photograph showing the damage to one of the rooms on campus, which was littered with ceiling tiles that had fallen down.
Friday’s quake occurred on a fault line between the Pacific and North American tectonic plates, the USGS said. The rupture between the faults occurred in an area where the Pacific plate is slowly moving northwest and subducting underneath Alaska. The epicenter of the earthquake was not located at the interface between the two plates, which would have been more likely to generate a tsunami.
The National Tsunami Warning Center often issues advisories immediately following an earthquake on a high-risk fault line, such as the one underneath Anchorage. The center then revises the warnings based on measurements and location.
Anchorage was severely damaged in March 1964 by the Great Alaska Earthquake, a 9.2-magnitude quake with its epicenter about 75 miles east of the city. That quake, which lasted for about four and a half minutes, was the most powerful earthquake recorded in American history. It destroyed a major part of downtown Anchorage and caused a tsunami that ravaged towns on the Gulf of Alaska and beyond.
There have been several aftershocks to the initial earthquake, according to the USGS, including a 5.8-magnitude in the city of Anchorage.