What happened
On 29 July 2025 (30 July local time) the subduction zone off the east coast of Kamchatka ruptured, close to the area of the great 1952 earthquake. The shaking was felt strongly in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky and generated a tsunami that flooded parts of the Kamchatka and Kuril coasts, including the port of Severo-Kurilsk. Warnings and evacuations were issued from Japan and Hawaii to the coasts of the Americas; outside Russia the waves were generally small. The earthquake was followed by a long series of strong aftershocks.
How to read these data
Magnitude measures the energy released at the focus: each step is about 32 times more energy, so an M 9 earthquake releases about a thousand times more energy than an M 7. Its effects, however, also depend on focal depth, distance to cities, ground conditions and building quality – a shallow M 7 beneath a city can be deadlier than a deep M 8 under the ocean.
Data: USGS ComCat (us6000qw60) · Wikipedia (pl) · Wikipedia (en)