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08-31-2016

Magnitude 6.7 Earthquake Strikes Alaska

Magnitude 6.7 Earthquake Strikes Alaska. A strong earthquake struck in a remote region off the Alaska coast, but there was no threat of tsunami or immediate reports of damage, officials said.

The magnitude-6.7 quake struck at 11 p.m. Thursday and was centered in the ocean about 35 miles beneath the seabed and some 400 miles southwest of Anchorage, the U.S. Geological Survey said. It hit a remote and lightly populated Aleutian Island region.

The temblor was felt on the Alaska Peninsula and Kodiak Island, more than 100 miles away.

The “earthquake lasted a minute – max,” Kodiak resident Don Roberts told the Kodiak Daily Mirror (http://bit.ly/1eDdSvE ). “We’re up for the next two hours talking about it.” Magnitude 6.7 Earthquake Strikes Alaska

The police dispatch office in Kodiak says the quake was felt at the station, but it received no reports of damage. Alaska is by far the largest U.S. state by area, comprising more total area than the next three largest states Texas, California, and Montana combined, and the seventh-largest subnational division in the world. It is the third-least populous and the most sparsely populated state, but by far the continent’s most populous territory located mostly north of the 60th parallel, with an estimated population of 738,432 as of 2015—more than quadruple the combined populations of Northern Canada and Greenland. Approximately half of Alaska’s residents live within the Anchorage metropolitan area. The state capital of Juneau is the second-largest city in the United States by area, comprising more territory than the states of Rhode Island and Delaware.

Several aftershocks of magnitude-3.0 or greater followed the larger shaking, the Geological Survey said.

There is no tsunami danger, according to the National Tsunami Warning Center.

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