Hawaii’s Big Island struck by 5.7 magnitude earthquake
A magnitude 5.7 earthquake struck Mauna Loa, the world’s largest active volcano, on the Big Island of Hawaii on Friday morning, the US Geological Survey said.
No tsunami was expected, according to the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center. The earthquake, which the USGS initially reported as magnitude 6.3 before downgrading it, was centered on Mauna Loa’s southern flank, 1.3 miles (2km) south-west of Pahala. Shaking could be felt as far as Honolulu, about 200 miles to the north on the island of Oahu.
There were several aftershocks in the region, but no reports of serious damage.
“Many areas may have experienced strong shaking” from the earthquake that occurred shortly after 10am local time, the Hawaii emergency management agency posted on X.
Hawaii News Now reported that residents on the Big Island said the quake caused shelves to shake and pictures to fall.
Mitch Roth, the Big Island mayor, was in Honolulu at a cardiologist appointment. “All of a sudden I felt like I was getting dizzy,” he said, thinking at first that it was the procedure and then realizing it was an earthquake. He immediately got on the phone with his emergency management officials.
“We’ll probably start hearing about damage in the next hour,” Roth said, pointing out that it was “a good sized earthquake” and that from what he had heard, there was no tsunami threat.
Roth said he was headed to the Honolulu airport to try to get an earlier flight back to the Big Island.
Julia Neal, the owner of Pahala Plantation Cottages, said a mirror and brass lamp fell down during some forceful shaking. “We have a lot of the old wooden plantations homes and so they were rattling pretty loudly,” she said.
Derek Nelson, the manager of the Kona Canoe Club restaurant in the Kona Inn Shopping Village in the oceanside community of Kona, on the island’s western side, said everyone felt it “big time” but that there was no damage.
“I mean, it shook us bad to where it wobbled some knees a little bit. It shook all the windows in the village,” he said.
Almost all of the earthquakes in Hawaii occur on and around the Big Island, according to the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory.
The observatory said Friday’s earth
quake was caused by the weight of the Hawaiian Islands on the Earth’s surface – a type of earthquake that occurs occasionally in the islands. The quake didn’t affect either Mauna Loa or neighboring Kilauea volcano, the observatory said, adding its intensity wouldn’t damage buildings or infrastructure.
Later in the afternoon, the USGS reported an unrelated 4.6 magnitude earthquake near Malibu, California. The Los Angeles mayor said the city’s fire department was conducting a routine survey to assess any damages.