A volcano near a key naval base on Russia’s eastern coast erupted early Sunday following a powerful magnitude-7.0 earthquake in the Pacific, roughly 63 miles away, according to Russian state media. The eruption briefly triggered a “code red” alert for aircraft in the area.
The Shiveluch volcano released an ash plume up to 5 miles above sea level and unleashed a flow of lava, as reported by the Tass news agency, citing experts from the Institute of Volcanology and Seismology of the Far Eastern Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
The Shiveluch volcano, located about 280 miles from Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky in Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula, is near a city of over 181,000 residents, which sits across a bay from a significant Russian submarine base. Additionally, the Ebeko volcano in the Kuril Islands emitted an ash plume 1.5 miles high, though it was not confirmed whether the earthquake directly caused either eruption.
The Kamchatka Volcanic Eruption Response Team briefly issued a “code red” alert for aircraft due to the ash cloud, but a later report from Tass indicated no disruptions to commercial flights and no damage to aviation infrastructure.
The U.S. Geological Survey reported that the earthquake occurred 18 miles beneath the Pacific Ocean’s surface, with its epicenter located 63 miles east of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky. No immediate reports of injuries or damage from the quake have been noted.
The earthquake initially triggered a tsunami warning, which was later lifted. The U.S. National Weather Service’s Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Honolulu had initially cautioned that hazardous tsunami waves could be possible within a 300-mile radius of the quake’s epicenter but later confirmed that the threat had passed. However, the center noted that minor sea level changes could persist in coastal areas close to the quake for several hours.