Earthquake near Cantwell felt throughout Interior and Southcentral Alaska

An earthquake near Cantwell this morning was felt across the Interior and Southcentral Alaska.

Shortly after 9:00 am, the Alaska Earthquake Center monitored a Magnitude 5.5 earthquake less than twenty miles southeast of Cantwell.

Dr. Stepehen Holtkamp with the Alaska Earthquake Center says this earthquake was fairly deep in the Earth.

“Our preliminary estimates are something like…fifty miles or so, so I think this is an earthquake in the down-going slab that’s connected to the subduction zone in the south end of Alaska.”

Holtkamp says that subduction zone, where one tectonic plate slides under another, is the same one that caused the Good Friday Earthquake of 1964. 

The earthquake felt as far away as Fairbanks, Seward, and Valdez. Holtkamp says the depth of this earthquake is a factor in how widely it was felt.

“Deep events can be felt quite a ways away.  Seismic waves travel pretty efficiently through the deeper Earth—through the Earth’s mantle.  There’s not a lot of attenuation as those waves travel.”

No significant damage has been reported as a result of this morning’s earthquake.