August 5, 2000 - Russian Earthquake Causes Substantial Landslide

Strong quake hits Russian island

Sakhalin Island, Russia — A powerful earthquake has rocked an island off the eastern coast of Russia, but there are no reports of damage or casualties.

Officials at the U.S. Geological Survey National Earthquake Information Center said the quake struck Sakhalin Island Saturday at 8:13 a.m. local time (21:13 Friday GMT) and had a magnitude of seven.

Spokesman Bruce Presgrave said: "We have not received any reports of damage, but with a quake of that magnitude, there is definitely a possibility of damage and casualties."

The Emergency Situations Ministry in Moscow said it had no information on injuries. News reports said the quake disrupted communications on much of the island.

Margarita Tsoi, a spokeswoman for the regional governor's office, told NTV: "The quake was felt in a considerably large territory, there is no damage in the zone of the earthquake and no victims." Tsoi said that many residents ran from their homes into the streets after the quake, fearing aftershocks.

Substantial mudslide

The ITAR-Tass news agency reported that the tremor set off a substantial mudslide on the mountainous island covering a road with mud up to four meters (13 feet) deep near the town of Makarov.

ITAR-Tass cited Alexander Spirin of the Sakhalinsk seismological station as saying the quake's epicenter was at 49N latitude, 142.5E longitude, a point about at the middle of the long, narrow island.

Spirin said the jolt was felt most severely between Makarov and the town of Uglegorsk, about 60 kilometres (40 miles) away on the island's western coast, the report said.

Sakhalin Island is about 850 kilometers (525 miles) northeast of the Russian port of Vladivostok. The island is about 950 kilometers (600 miles) in length, with mountains topping 1,300 meters (4,200 feet) running down its spine.

In 1995, an earthquake registering 7.5 occurred about 385 kilometers (240 miles) north of the latest earthquake. It killed almost 2,000 people and caused severe damage. U.S. Geological Survey spokeswoman Trudi Harlow said in Washington that the latest quake was much less forceful in terms of energy released.

The USGS is prohibited from reproducing copyrighted news articles on its web pages — as a result, we generally report landslides of significant magnitude or those that our research team has investigated. Since we do not receive automatic reports of landslides everywhere in the world, it is suggested that those searching for recent landslides, also engage the use of local newspapers, most of which are readily accessible on the internet.