12/11/2013 18:58
Strong earthquake shakes Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula
A 6.6-magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of Russia’s far eastern Kamchatka Peninsula on Tuesday, RIA Novosti reported.
No one was injured in the quake, which struck at about 7 p.m. local time (11 a.m. Moscow time), the region’s Emergencies Ministry said, but emergency workers are surveying buildings in the area to check for damage. The earthquake shook the ground on the peninsula up to 300 kilometers (186 miles) from the epicenter, according to the local geophysical center of the Russian Academy of Sciences, but did not cause a tsunami.
Earthquake severity in most former Soviet states is measured on the Richter magnitude scale, which quantifies the amount of seismic energy released by the tremors. Earthquakes with a magnitude of 6.0 to 6.9 are considered strong, potentially causing damage in populated areas within a 160-kilometer (100-mile) radius.