Pacific Tsunami Warning Area Expanded After 8.1 Quake

This happened Wednesday, November 15, 2006 at 03:14:16 AM? (PST) - Pacific Standard (Los Angeles, Vancouver, Tijuana).

-- A tsunami warning area was expanded from eastern Russia to Guam after a magnitude-8.1 earthquake struck in the northern Pacific off the Russian Kuril Islands. The first waves were detected in northern Japan and measured up to 30 centimeters (1 foot) on the island of Hokkaido, the U.S. Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said. Wave heights of 20 centimeters were recorded north of Tokyo, Japan's meteorological agency said. Japan later downgraded its alert for Hokkaido to an advisory.

``That's good news because it was a fairly big earthquake,'' Victor Sardina, a geophysicist at the center in Honolulu, Hawaii, said in a telephone interview. ``The wave is pretty small and we don't expect extensive damage. We will still keep monitoring to make sure it doesn't represent a threat.''The quake struck today at 8:15 p.m. Tokyo time at a depth of 30 kilometers (19 miles), the Japanese agency said. Residents of Japanese coastal areas were urged to flee after the agency said the tsunami could produce a wave up to 2 meters (6.5 feet) high in northern and eastern Japan. - bloom