How the Tsunami travels after one of the strongest earthquakes ever recorded

An 8.8 is the equivalent of basically detonating one trillion pounds or one trillion kilograms of TNT. Most of the buildings remained standing but the facade of a kindergarten collapsed but no one died or was injured. You're really compressing all that energy into much narrower smaller depth of the water and that really bottles it all up and that's when you get a wave to actually manifest and you push that water ashore. The warnings were for all over Japan so I was frankly scared. We've got water we got some snacks so we're just we're going to stay elevated. This is our first tsunami warning ever so this is all new to us. Very warm welcome to the day. Now millions of people have been evacuating from coastal regions along the Pacific after one of the strongest earthquakes ever recorded. The 8.8 magnitude quake hit off the Kamchatka peninsula, a sparsely populated part of Russia's far east, triggering a tsunami which soon struck Russia's Kuril Islands and Japan's northern island of Hokkaido. In other areas people have been rushing to higher ground after tsunami warnings were issued. Let's take a look at some numbers. According to the National Centers for Environmental Information in the U.S. this is approximately how long it takes a tsunami to reach different parts of the Pacific. From a quake to crashing waves. A magnitude 8.8 earthquake struck off the coast of Russia's Kamchatka peninsula, one of the strongest ever recorded. Russian authorities said its power sent waves of six meters surging ashore. It also damaged buildings and the power grid on a island. At kindergarten number 15 the building facade collapsed but thank God there was no one injured. There were no children but there is damage. The earthquake's effects have been felt around the world. In Japan almost two million people evacuated to high buildings or higher ground. Waves of around 60 centimeters were measured from Hokkaido in the north down to Tokyo Bay according to Japan's meteorological agency. Even though the initial waves were not destructive alerts remained in place for several hours. I grabbed only what I could and walked here with others. I feel safer here as there are other people. In Hawaii roads turned to gridlock as warnings of waves of up to three meters were issued by authorities. So far we have not seen a wave of consequence which is great relief to us. It's kind of a blessing to not be reporting any damage. Meteorologist Matthew Capucci told us more about the tsunami and the massive 8.8 magnitude quake that caused it. Now to give folks some perspective an 8.8 is the equivalent of basically detonating one trillion pounds or one trillion kilograms of TNT. It's an enormous blast an enormous amount of force that is released and of course that force comes from the earth's crust essentially fracturing and sliding against one another. This occurred in the pacific ring of fire. It's on the periphery of the pacific tectonic plate and what's happening is that plate is moving northwest at about we'll say 77 millimeters so roughly three inches every year and it's colliding with and subducting or kind of going underneath a different plate called the Othotsk plate. Now that collision that sort of convergence of the plates adds an enormous amount of stress and tension that is suddenly released every so often in these mega thrust earthquakes as a pacific plate which is dense and being crushed by the weight of the water above it slides violently underneath the Othotsk plate. That occurs in something called the Kuril Kamchatka trench and that releases exceptional energy in these mega thrust quakes. Now the issue with the thrust quake you have an up and down movement of the seafloor. In some earthquakes you have a side to side shake we call that strike slip but this was an up and down thrust quake and for that reason we displaced water. We essentially shook the seafloor and caused a potentially significant tsunami but the interesting thing if you're on the open ocean on say a cruise ship you wouldn't notice the thing as a tsunami passes beneath you because the tsunami think of it as a wave of just energy that energy is propagating through the ocean and when you have an ocean that's three four plus kilometers deep as much of the pacific is that energy has a lot of sort of room to be dispersed vertically but once you start getting towards the coast and the bathymetry or the shape of the seafloor starts to slope upwards to meet both the continental shelf and more importantly the beaches you're really compressing all that energy into much narrower smaller depth of the water and that really bottles it all up and that's when you get a wave to actually manifest and you push that water ashore and that's why tsunamis are really tough to ascertain the magnitude of until they reach the coastline. Let's get across to Lima Peru where we have a journalist Martine Ripple standing by for us. Martine first of all just tell us what has happened in Peru so far. Hello Claire it's nice to be with your audience well since this morning Peruvians especially those living along the coast have been receiving cell phone alerts through our early warning system advising people to stay away from beaches and other vulnerable coastal areas. Authorities have closed around 125 ports nationwide while the threat remains however the alert is gradually being lifted about 20 minutes ago it was reported that activities were returning to normal for normality at the Callao port the main port of our country. Earlier this morning authorities published a schedule indicating when the tsunami was expected to hit various coastal regions. According to that timeline the wave should have been reached Lima around 2 p.m but right now is like 20 past 3 and nothing has happened. That said we or there were reports from some areas that the sea withdraw in waters by several dozen meters from its usual tideline although no damage has been reported so far. Okay well that sounds like good news for the moment at least. Peru of course sits directly on this so-called pacific ring of fire which is an area that sees a lot of volcanic and seismic activity so a place that knows a thing or two about this. What preparations would you typically have in place in Peru you know in the event of a possible tsunami? Yeah indeed tremors and earthquakes activity happen regularly in Peru it lies squarely on the ring of fire which is responsible for the 10 most powerful earthquakes ever recorded in modern history but while people are aware of the risk public confidence in Peru in how prepared we are this is still shaky. After receiving this morning's tsunami alert the public's immediate reaction was okay but what should we actually do now? Many areas along Peru 3000 kilometers pacific coastline are highly vulnerable. They have poor infrastructure and informal housing too close to the tideline. In Lima where one third of the country's population lives the coastal roads are often congested and evacuations options are limited so I would say that we know the risk but we are not prepared as we should be. Martin thank you so much for your insights today we've been speaking with a journalist Martin Riefel in Lima. Thank you very much.