A far-eastern giant that sent a Pacific-wide tsunami all the way to Hawaii and Chile — early proof that these waves are an ocean-crossing threat, not a local one.
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DownloadThe 1952 Kamchatka earthquake struck on November 4, 1952, registering magnitude 9.0 (moment magnitude, Mw). Each whole step on the moment-magnitude scale is roughly 32 times more energy, so this released on the order of 31,623× the energy of a magnitude 6.0 earthquake.
Its epicenter was located near 52.62°N, 159.78°E, at a depth of about 22 km — a shallow crustal earthquake. Shallow earthquakes like this release their energy close to the surface, which is why the shaking near the epicenter was so violent.
An estimated 10,000 people were killed.