Tsunami warnings lifted for most of South America after one of the largest earthquakes ever recorded: Live updates

A small California coastal city near the border with Oregon that has recorded dozens of tsunamis, including one that killed 11 people more than 60 years ago, saw little damage Wednesday as locals returned to their routines amid sunny skies in the town known as a tsunami magnet.

Crescent City recorded waves of up to 4ft early Wednesday — the highest recorded anywhere in the continental United States following an 8.8-magnitude earthquake centered off the coast of Russia’s Far East hours earlier. Still, those were far smaller than the 21ft waves caused by the deadly 1964 tsunami.

This time, no one was injured in the city of 6,600 and there was no major flooding, with downtown open later Wednesday morning. A dock at the city’s harbor was damaged, and officials warned people to stay away from beaches and waterways.

A powerful earthquake struck on Wednesday off Russia’s Far East coast, flooding a fishing port with waves from a tsunami, cutting power to a few areas and sending some panicked residents fleeing buildings but causing only a few injuries.

Regional authorities say they were prepared for the 8.8-magnitude quake and the subsequent waves, and moved quickly to keep residents safe. They introduced a state of emergency in some areas, but said there was no major damage.

Here is what to know about the Russian areas hit by the quake and tsunami:

Dubbed the “land of fire and ice,” Kamchatka is one of the most active volcanic regions on Earth. It has about 300 volcanoes, with 29 of them still active, according to NASA’s Earth Observatory. Quakes and tsunamis regularly strike the peninsula that lies close to an ocean trench where two tectonic plates meet.

Japan has downgraded its last remaining tsunami alert, which was in the country’s north.

Tsunami advisories remain in place for its Pacific coast following the 8.8 magnitude earthquake that struck off Russia’s Far East on Wednesday.

New Zealand’s emergency management officials say coastlines of the country are experiencing strong currents and wave surges as tsunami activity reaches shores.

An alert broadcast to every cell phone this morning said the threat is likely to remain in place until at least midday.

Evacuations haven’t been ordered. But people throughout the South Pacific island nation are warned to stay out of the water and away from beaches, shorelines, harbors, rivers and estuaries.

New Zealand is about 9,656km from the quake’s epicenter. Officials warn that the first tsunami waves might not be the largest to arrive and people should treat the threat as real until the alert is canceled.

Russia’s Klyuchevskoy volcano has erupted on the Kamchatka peninsula, following a powerful earthquake in the Pacific on Wednesday.

Scientists described the “descent of burning hot lava” down the slopes of one of the world’s highest active volcanoes, hours after a huge 8.8-magnitude earthquake rocked the region and prompted tsunami waves in the Pacific.

Klyuchevskoy, which has erupted several times over recent years, is located approximately 450 km (280 miles) north of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, the regional capital.

In South America, three of the four countries with coastlines on the Pacific lifted the tsunami warnings.

Authorities in Colombia, Ecuador and Peru this morning announced the tsunami alerts were dropped. In Chile, the country with the largest Pacific coastline in South America, the government kept the alert along most of the coastline while lifting it in some areas where authorities said there are no longer risks.

Chile’s interior minister, Alvaro Elizalde, said that evacuation orders remain in place in areas with remaining alerts and classes will continue canceled on Thursday.

He said that waves reached a height of 1.1m in some places, and in one location reached 2.5m.

A woman in Japan has died while attempting to evacuate to high ground after a massive 8.8 earthquake triggered tsunami warnings across the Pacific region.

The 58-year-old woman died after her car veered off a national road and went off a cliff while she was trying to leave a coastal area yesterday in Kumano city of Mie Prefecture.

The woman succumbed to severe head injuries.

After receiving the tsunami warning, the woman reportedly sent a message to her family saying, “I’ll leave my car on higher ground. There’s an evacuation area”.

After a massive 8.8 magnitude earthquake rattled off the coast of Russia on Tuesday, officials in Hawaii warned residents a tsunami with potentially dangerous levels of inundation might be on the way.

When the National Weather Service updated Hawaii’s tsunami watch to a tsunami warning local officials called for evacuations of at-risk costal communities.

If you were to believe some posts on social media, the billionaire media mogul Oprah Winfrey — who lives in Maui part-time — was accused of callously refusing to let evacuees use her private road to shorten their travel time.

Millions of temporary evacuees returned home on Wednesday night after most of the tsunami warnings were lifted across the Pacific.

The 8.8-magnitude earthquake struck the sparsely populated Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia during the early hours of Wednesday, prompting tsunami warnings and evacuations across regions from the US to Japan.

Tsunami warnings rippled across the Pacific, triggering emergency responses and widespread disruption. In Peru, authorities shuttered 65 of the country’s 121 Pacific ports as a precaution, while flights to and from Hawaii’s Maui island were cancelled.

Japan, haunted by memories of the 2011 disaster, ordered nearly two million people to evacuate to higher ground.

By Wednesday evening, however, countries across the region began lifting or scaling back alerts, allowing coastal communities to return.