Personnel in the National Park Service's Alaska Regional Office were forced to evacuate the building Friday as an earthquake with a magnitude of 7.0 rocked Anchorage, knocking out power and electricity.
"Regional O is evacuated. Major earthquake. No power water heat," Peter Christian, the Park Service's public affairs officer for Alaska, wrote in an email. "Roads hit hard. No info on parks, but it was centered in Anchorage. All ok as far as I know."
Additional details from the Park Service staff in Alaska were not immediately available.
The temblor hit Friday morning, causing significant road damage, shaking buildings and leaving behind cracks in buildings. The U.S. Geological Survey attributed the quake to a rupture inside the Pacific tectonic plate, not volcanism.
"Earthquakes are common in this region. Over the past century, 14 other M 6+ earthquakes have occurred within 150 km of the November 30, 2018 event," the USGS said on its website. "Two of these – a M 6.6 earthquake in July 1983 and a M 6.4 event in September 1983 – were at a similarly shallow depth and caused damage in the region of Valdez. The M 9.2 great Alaska earthquake of March 1964, was an interface thrust faulting earthquake that ruptured over several hundred kilometers between Anchorage and the Alaska-Aleutians trench, and to the southwest."
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Wishes for safety and security to my Alaskan friends, NPS or not.