Moscow, Russia.- One of Russia’s most active volcanoes has erupted, spewing plumes of ash 5 kilometres (3 miles) into the air over Russia’s far eastern Kamchatka Peninsula and briefly prompting a “code red” warning for aircraft.
The Shiveluch volcano began to sputter shortly after a 7.0-magnitude earthquake struck off the eastern coast of Kamchatka early Sunday, according to volcanologists at the Russian Academy of Sciences. They warned that another, even stronger, quake could be on the way.
The academy’s Institute of Volcanology and Seismology published a video showing the ash cloud over Shiveluch. It stretched for 490 kilometers east and southeast of the volcano.
The Ebeko volcano in the Kuril Islands also spewed ash 2.5 kilometers into the air, the institute said. It did not explicitly say whether the quake triggered the eruptions.
A “code red” warning about the ash cloud briefly put all aircraft in the area on alert, the Kamchatka Volcanic Eruption Response Team said. A separate report on Sunday by the official Tass news agency said no commercial flights had been disrupted and there was no damage to air infrastructure.
The tremors in the area could be the prelude to an even stronger quake in southeastern Kamchatka, Russian scientists have warned. The Volcanology Institute said a possible second quake could occur “within 24 hours” with a magnitude of close to 9.0.
There were no immediate reports of injuries from Sunday’s quake, which struck at a depth of 6 kilometers (3.7 miles) below the seabed and was centered 108 kilometers (67 miles) southeast of the nearest city, Russian emergency officials said.
Russian news media quoted residents of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, a port city of more than 181,000 people located opposite a major Russian submarine base, as reporting some of the strongest tremors “in a long time.”
On November 4, 1952, a magnitude 9.0 earthquake in Kamchatka caused damage but no deaths were reported despite causing waves of 9.1 meters in Hawaii.
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