People in Kamchatka have felt the echoes of a powerful earthquake that occurred off the Aleutian Islands, at a distance of 1,349 km away from Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, the biggest population center in the Kamchatka Peninsula.
The magnitude of the quake, of which the epicenter was located in the vicinity of Little Sitkin Island and the seismic focus was identified at a depth of about 100 km below the oceanic floor, totaled 7.9 points on the open-ended Richter scale, sources at the Kamchatka branch of the Geophysical Service of the Russian Academy of Sciences told Itar-Tass.
A seismic shock measuring about 2.0 points was registered in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky.
The authorities did not declare a tsunami threat and there was no panic among the population, which is accustomed to seismic events in this highly seismically active part of Russia, known for its breath-taking landscapes dotted with active volcanoes.