September 9, 2012 – A 6.0 Magnitude Earthquake Struck the Kuril Islands in Russia: The quake struck at 5:39AM in London (GMT). It was 5:39PM at the epicenter. The tremor hit at a depth of 56 kilometers (35 miles) and was not expected to produce a tsunami.
The quake occurred 88 miles SSW of Severokuril’sk, Kuril Islands, Russia, 280 miles SSW of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskiy, Russian and 1,241 miles NE of Tokyo, Japan.
The Kuril-Kamchatka arc extends approximately 2,100 km from Hokkaido, Japan, along the Kuril Islands and the Pacific coast of the Kamchatka Peninsula to its intersection with the Aleutian arc near the Commander Islands, Russia. It marks the region where the Pacific plate subducts into the mantle beneath the Okhotsk micro plate, part of the larger North America plate. This subduction is responsible for the generation of the Kuril Islands chain, active volcanoes located along the entire arc, and the deep offshore Kuril-Kamchatka trench. Relative to a fixed North America plate, the Pacific plate is moving towards the northwest at a rate that increases from 75 mm/year near the northern end of the arc to 83 mm/year in the south.
The Master of Disaster
