No Pacific-Wide Tsunami From Aleutian Islands Quake
No tsunami threat to Hawaii was generated by a strong earthquake that struck the Aleutian Islands this morning, the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Ewa Beach, Oahu, said.
The center said the tremor with a preliminary magnitude of 7.0 struck at 6:25 a.m. Hawaii time.
Its epicenter was 56 miles east-southeast of Adak, Alaska, at a depth of about 21 miles, the US Geological Survey said.
The location was to the east of a 6.9-magnitude temblor that struck the Aleutians on Sept. 26, 2012.
The island chain was also the source of an 8.6-magnitude quake on April 1, 1946 that caused widespread damage in Hilo and killed 159 people in Hawaii and six in Alaska.
The seismically active Aleutian archipelago extends more than 1,800 miles from the Gulf of Alaska in the east to the Kamchatka Peninsula in the west.
It marks the region where the Pacific plate subducts into the mantle beneath the North America plate, a process which has created the island chain and the deep offshore Aleutian Trench.