Nov. 15, 2006 —A powerful undersea earthquake prompted tsunami warnings Wednesday for Japan, Russia and Alaska, but the danger passed after a series of tiny waves hit the northern Japanese coast.
Several thousand people fled to higher ground on Japan's northernmost island of Hokkaido. The waves, however, did not swell higher than 16 inches and rapidly diminished in size, and Japan's meteorological agency later withdrew its tsunami warning after about three hours, although it urged continued caution.
A tsunami warning posted for coastal areas of Alaska was later canceled, as were watches for Hawaii and the northern tip of British Columbia and precautionary advisories for the states of Washington, Oregon and California.
The agency told Japanese coastal residents to flee to higher ground after initially predicting that a 6 1/2-foot tsunami would hit the Pacific coast of its northernmost island of Hokkaido and main island of Honshu after 9:10 p.m. (7:10 a.m. EST).
A wave that hit the port of Nemuro on Hokkaido at 9:29 p.m. was measured at 16 inches, and live video from the area showed calm seas. A few minutes later, a second, 8-inch wave hit the nearby port of Kushiro, the agency said, and the waves got progressively smaller.
The Alaska Tsunami Warning Center said a 7.8-inch wave hit Shemya Island and a 3-inch wave hit Amchitka Island in the Aleutian chain.
A magnitude 9.1-magnitude earthquake off the coast of Indonesia on Dec. 26, 2004, caused a tsunami as high as 33 feet that killed at least 213,000 people in 11 countries.
Takeshi Hachimine, chief of the Japanese meteorological agency's earthquake and tsunami monitoring section, said aftershocks of Wednesday's quake could trigger more waves, but those are expected to pose little danger to Japan.
