On Friday, a 7.0 magnitude earthquake rattled Alaska's Aleutian Islands at 8:25 a.m., the quake occurring offshore in the Earth's subduction zone, a seismically active region where plates grind and dive, USA Today reports.
Local communities felt it strongly, though there was no structural damage, and was followed by several aftershocks, including one measuring 5.4. While the quakes did not trigger a tsunami warning, Michael Burgy with the West Coast and Alaska Tsunami Warning Center in Palmer, Alaska, told the Associated Press that the center is monitoring for potential tsunamis caused by land or underwater landslides.
The Aluetian communities of Adak, where just 320 people live, and Atka, a community of just 64, felt the quake the strongest. These sparsely populated regions were both key locations during World War II. In Atka, residents were displaced and relocated to Southeast Alaska so that the U.S. government could demolish the village to prevent the Japanese from seizing and claiming it, and after the war, the village was rebuilt and the residents returned.
Friday's quake was centered about 67 miles southwest of Adak, which is located about 1,200 smiles southwest of Anchorage.
"I thought it was my dog running up the stairs," Debra Sharrah, city clerk of the small town Adak, told the Associated Press. "It kept making noise and then it got louder. So then all of a sudden the rumbling started." Her townhome was shaking and swaying during the quake, though luckily the only thing that fell over was a stepstool. The quake lasted for about a minute.
"I heard it coming," Kathleen Nevzoroff, who was sitting at her computer when the quake struck, told the Associated Press. "I ran to my doors and opened them and my chimes were all ringing."
Unlike California's famous San Andreas fault line, which is a strike-split fault, the plates of the Earth grind and dive in the subduction zone off the coast of Alaska.
