Dormant volcano wakes up after 600 years
The Ministry for Emergency Services lifted a tsunami warning for the Kamchatka Peninsula after the 7.0 magnitude tremor hit the nearby Kuril Islands on Sunday. It had said earlier on the Telegram messaging app that expected wave heights were low, but warned people to move away from the shore.
The Pacific Tsunami Warning System, which gauged the quake at 7.0, said, however, there was no tsunami warning after the quake. The US Geological Survey also put the quake at magnitude 7.
Both incidents could be connected to the huge 8.8 quake that rocked Russia's Far East on Wednesday last week, triggering tsunami warnings and alerts as far away as French Polynesia, Chile and New Zealand, and was followed by an eruption of Klyuchevskoy, the most active volcano on the Kamchatka Peninsula.
The Kuril Islands stretch from the southern tip of Kamchatka Peninsula. Russian scientists had warned last Wednesday that strong aftershocks were possible in the region in the next several weeks.
"This is the first historically confirmed eruption of Krasheninnikov Volcano in 600 years," RIA cited Olga Girina, head of the Kamchatka Volcanic Eruption Response Team, as saying.
On the Telegram channel of the Institute of Volcanology and Seismology, Girina said that Krasheninnikov's last lava effusion took place within 40 years of 1463 and no eruption has been known since.
The Kamchatka branch of Russia's ministry for emergency services said that an ash plume rising up to 6000 metres (5.9km) has been recorded following the volcano's eruption. The volcano itself stands at 1856 metres.
"The ash cloud has drifted eastward, toward the Pacific Ocean. There are no populated areas along its path," the ministry said on Telegram.
The eruption of the volcano has been assigned an orange aviation code, indicating a heightened risk to aircraft, the ministry said. Nuclear sub base damaged - report
A nuclear submarine base in Russia's remote Far East region was damaged last week following the 8.8 quake, the New York Times is reporting, citing satellite images.
Photos captured by Planet Labs, a commercial satellite imaging firm, show damage to a floating pier at the Rybachiy submarine base on the Kamchatka Peninsula, the newspaper reported on Monday.
One section of the pier appears to have broken away from its anchor point. Aside from the damaged pier, the satellite imagery does not show any other major destruction.
Reuters could not independently verify the report. There was no immediate response from Russia's defence ministry outside business hours to a Reuters request for comment.
The Rybachiy nuclear submarine base, a strategic hub for Russia's Pacific Fleet, serves as a facility for the maintenance, deployment and operations of the country's nuclear-powered submarines in the Pacific region.
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