Irish Seismographs Detect Soundwaves from Russian Earthquake
Soundwaves from the powerful magnitude 8.8 earthquake off Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula were felt as far away as Ireland in the early hours of Wednesday morning.
At exactly 12:37am Irish time, Irish National Seismic Network (INSN) and Geological Survey Ireland (GSI) seismographs in Valentia (Co. Kerry), Ennistymon (Co. Clare), and Dublin registered the arrival of soundwaves from the earthquake — just 13 minutes after it struck the north Pacific region.
The tremor, initially measured at magnitude 8.0 before being upgraded to 8.8, occurred at a shallow depth of 19.3 kilometres roughly 136 km east-southeast of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, significantly amplifying its impact at the surface.
The event was powerful enough to send seismic waves racing across the Earth at speeds exceeding 5,000 kilometres per hour, reaching Irish monitoring stations less than a quarter of an hour after the rupture.
The megathrust quake triggered tsunami waves measuring between 3 and 5 metres in parts of Russia’s Kuril Islands, causing coastal flooding and prompting large-scale evacuations in Severo-Kurilsk. Warnings were issued across the Pacific, including in Japan, where more than 900,000 residents in regions such as Hokkaido, Honshu, and Kyushu were advised to evacuate.
Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant was temporarily shut down and evacuated as a precaution, though no abnormalities were detected.
The U.S. National Tsunami Warning Center issued alerts for parts of Alaska, Hawaii, and the U.S. west coast, including California, Oregon, and Washington, while countries as far afield as Ecuador, Chile, Indonesia, and New Zealand also went on alert. Many advisories were later downgraded as wave impacts proved smaller than initially feared.
Dozens of aftershocks have followed the main quake, some registering at magnitude 6.0 or higher, raising concern for ongoing seismic activity in the region.
