Powerful quake rattles Anchorage

A powerful earthquake jolted southern Alaska on Friday morning, buckling roads, disrupting rush-hour traffic and jamming telephone service in and around Anchorage, the state’s largest city but there were no reports of serious injuries. The 7.0 magnitude quake struck about 8 miles (13 km) north of Anchorage, a city of 300,000 residents accounting for about 40% of Alaska’s population, and was followed by dozens of aftershocks that continued to rattle nerves throughout the day.

Public schools and many businesses across Anchorage closed early, and an eerie quiet settled over the city’s largely deserted streets by nightfall. At least two local television stations were briefly knocked off the air by the tremor, which some people said sounded like a roar of gunfire. Roads and bridges appeared to have been hardest hit, but Anchorage was otherwise mostly spared from major structural damage, authorities said. Power outages and disruption of phone service were widespread.

City Fire Chief Jodie Hettrick said two small, older buildings had collapsed, and that her department responded to several structure fires. Emergency medical personnel answered 56 calls in the hours immediately after the temblor, although none involved serious injuries, Hettrick said.

“The fact that we went through something this significant with this minimal amount of damage says that we’re a very well-prepared community, that our building codes and our building professionals have done a terrific job,” Mayor Ethan Berkowitz told an earlier news conference. The initial quake produced strong shaking within a 50 km radius of its epicenter, with ground movement felt as far away as Fairbanks, 400 km to the north, and Kodiak.