ALERT FOR THE WORLD – A strong earthquake of a magnitude of 8.8 hit Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula early on Wednesday, July 30, 2025 (local time). This set off widespread tsunami warnings across the Pacific. China, Peru, and Ecuador are now on the list of countries that are actively issuing tsunami alerts and telling people to leave. The original list included Russia, Japan, the United States, Australia, New Zealand, and other Pacific Islands.
The earthquake, which happened off the east coast of the Kamchatka Peninsula at a shallow depth of about 20 km, is thought to be the strongest to impact the world in 14 years, since the terrible earthquake in Japan in 2011.
Effect on the Pacific:
The Tsunami Advisory Center of China’s Ministry of National Resources said that the earthquake “has triggered a tsunami, which is expected to cause damage to certain coastal areas of China.” In some places of eastern China, waves are expected to be between 30 cm and 1 m high.
Peru: The Peruvian Navy’s Directorate of Hydrography and Navigation has sent out a tsunami warning for the whole coast of Peru after the National Tsunami Warning Center looked into it.
In Ecuador, “preventive evacuations” have been proposed for the Galapagos Islands, which are very important to the environment. Ecuador’s Secretariat for Risk Management has told the Insular Region to “immediately suspend maritime activities” and “preventive evacuations of beaches, docks, and low-lying areas.”
There have been reports of tsunami waves up to four meters (13 feet) hitting portions of coastal Russia, including Severo-Kurilsk. These waves have caused some damage to houses and flooding. Russian officials have verified that many people were hurt, mostly because of fear during evacuations. A kindergarten in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky was also damaged. The northern Kuril Islands are now in a state of emergency.
The first tsunami waves, which were about 30 centimeters high, hit coastal cities in Hokkaido, Japan’s northeast, about 10:40 local time. Japan’s Meteorological Agency has warned that bigger waves could come next and has told around a million people to leave their homes in 133 municipalities, mostly in Hokkaido and along the northeast coast. As a safety measure, workers at the Fukushima Daiichi and Fukushima Daini nuclear plants have been sent home.
The government of Hawaii in the United States put its emergency response plan into action. Tsunami warning sirens went off all over Honolulu, telling people to move to higher ground. A tsunami warning is also in place for the whole West Coast of the US (California, Oregon, and Washington) and some areas of Alaska.
The strongest quake in 14 years:
The Kamchatka earthquake, which had a magnitude of 8.8, is tied with the 2010 Chile earthquake and the 1906 Ecuador-Colombia earthquake as the sixth-strongest earthquake ever recorded. This is the strongest earthquake since the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake, which had a magnitude of 9.1 and caused tsunami waves that were up to 40.5 meters high. It killed more than 18,000 people and caused a lot of damage, including the Fukushima nuclear crisis.
Authorities all throughout the Pacific Rim are still on high alert. They want to make sure that people know that tsunamis usually come in waves, and that the first wave isn’t always the biggest. People who live in coastal areas that are affected are being told to stay away from beaches, harbors, and low-lying areas and to follow official evacuation orders. There are also expected to be strong aftershocks in the Kamchatka area.