Unalaska public safety officials earlier Monday had sent out a release saying they would be conducting tests of the community’s tsunami warning sirens. Unalaska officials sent out a message saying the city is just outside the warning zone and they aren’t ordering evacuations right now. “And so we commonly have large, magnitude 7 earthquakes in that area.” And because of that, the Pacific plate actually goes underneath the North American plate, where it melts,” Caruso said, noting that’s why there are volcanoes in the region.

“This is an area where the Pacific plate is subducting underneath the North American plate. He said an earthquake of this size, in this area, is not a surprise. The size of the quake was originally reported to have been a magnitude of 7.4, but has been revised to a 7.5, said Paul Caruso, a geophysicist with the U.S. Public safety officials in King Cove sent out an alert urging residents in the coastal area to move inland to higher ground. Some schools in the Kenai Peninsula Borough School District were evacuating to higher ground, the district said on Twitter. The quake was recorded at a depth of 19 miles. The community is about 800 miles southwest of Anchorage. It was centered about 67 miles southeast of Sand Point, according to the Alaska Earthquake Center. The quake struck beneath the Pacific Ocean just before 1 p.m. Mayer wasn’t aware of any structural damage and said officials planned to reopen school normally on Tuesday. He said a school bus also was sent to a fish processing facility to bring workers to the school. Patrick Mayer, superintendent of the Aleutians East Borough School District, said parents picked up children from Sand Point School, which also served an evacuation point. The warning was downgraded to an advisory just over two hours after the quake. The quake was centered near Sand Point, a city of about 900 people off the Alaska Peninsula, where wave levels hit 2 feet, according to the National Tsunami Warning Center. Wailing sirens prompted residents to seek higher ground in communities along Alaska’s southern coast after a reported 7.5 magnitude earthquake that shook buildings triggered a tsunami warning Monday.

Alaska quake