Thousands of Americans fled fearing for their lives in the early hours of this morning after a huge earthquake 170 miles off Alaska triggered a tsunami warning for much of the West Coast of the United States and Canada.
Tsunami sirens sounded in Kodiak, the main city on Kodiak Island, about 600km southwest of Anchorage, warning people in affected areas to seek refuge on higher ground.
Officials warned that there was “extraordinary threat to life or property” in coastal areas of Alaska.
A US weatherman tweeted that an Alaskan buoy had recorded a 32ft (9.7m) water rise shortly after the earthquake hit.
The US Geological Survey said initially that the quake had a preliminary reading of 8.2 and had struck 278km southeast of Kodiak, Alaska, at a depth of about 10km soon after midnight local time.
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The quake — later adjusted to magnitude 7.9 — hit at 12.31 am local time in the Gulf of Alaska, according to the United States Geological Survey.
The United States National Tsunami Warning Center issued an alert warning for the coast of Alaska to British Columbia and the border with the US at Washington State.
It placed a tsunami watch all the way down the US west coast to Mexico as well as in Hawaii in the Pacific Ocean, although that was subsequently cancelled.
Earlier in the day Indonesia was hit by a strong earthquake about 40 minutes before the larger quake rocked Alaska.
According to the US Geological Survey, the magnitude 6.0 quake was centred off western Java at a depth of about 27 miles. The epicentre was about 95 miles southwest of Jakarta, the capital. Buildings on the densely populated island were damaged and office blocks in the capital shook for ten to 20 seconds, sending people running into the streets.
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There were reports that some students were seriously injured in the quake.
The Alaskan quake came nearly seven years after Japan was hit by a 9.0 magnitude earthquake — its strongest ever recorded — which triggered an enormous tsunami that breached the sea walls of coastal towns, killing at least 15,000 people.
That quake also sparked the crisis at Japan’s Fukushima nuclear power station.
A 9.1 magnitude earthquake, one of the most powerful ever recorded, struck off the Indonesian island of Sumatra in December 2004.
More than 250,000 people in Indonesia, Sir Lanka , India and elsewhere were killed by massives waves generated by the quake.