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PUERTO AYORA, Ecuador: Tsunami warnings were lifted across the Pacific rim Wednesday, allowing millions of temporary evacuees to return home.
After one of the strongest earthquakes ever recorded rattled Russia’s sparsely populated Far East, more than a dozen nations — from Japan to the United States to Ecuador — warned citizens to stay away from coastal regions.
Storm surges of up to four meters (12 feet) were predicted for some parts of the Pacific, after the 8.8 quake struck off Russia’s Kamchatka peninsula.
The tsunamis caused widespread disruption. Peru closed 65 of its 121 Pacific ports and authorities on Maui canceled flights to and from the Hawaiian island.
But fears of a catastrophe were not realized, with country after country lifting or downgrading warnings and telling coastal residents they could return.
In Japan, almost two million people had been ordered to higher ground, before the warnings were downgraded or rescinded.
The Fukushima nuclear plant in northeast Japan — destroyed by a huge quake and tsunami in 2011 — was temporarily evacuated.

The only reported fatality was a woman killed while driving her car off a cliff in Japan as she tried to escape, local media reported.

In Chile, authorities conducted what the Interior Ministry said was “perhaps the most massive evacuation ever carried out in our country” — with 1.4 million people ordered to high ground.
Chilean authorities reported no damage or victims and registered waves of just 60 centimeters (two feet) on the country’s north coast.
In the Galapagos Islands, where waves of up to three meters were expected, there was relief as the Ecuadoran navy’s oceanographic institute said the danger had passed.
Locals reported the sea level falling and then rising suddenly, a phenomenon which is commonly seen with the arrival of a tsunami.
But only a surge of just over a meter was reported, causing no damage.
“Everything is calm, I’m going back to work. The restaurants are reopening and the places tourists visit are also open again,” said 38-year-old Santa Cruz resident Isabel Grijalva.
Earlier national parks were closed, schools were shuttered, loudspeakers blared warnings and tourists were spirited off sightseeing boats and onto the safety of land.
The worst damage was seen in Russia, where a tsunami crashed through the port of Severo-Kurilsk and submerged the local fishing plant, officials said.
 

Russian state television footage showed buildings and debris swept into the sea.
The surge of water reached as far as the town’s World War II monument about 400 meters from the shoreline, said Mayor Alexander Ovsyannikov.
The initial quake also caused limited damage and only light injuries, despite being the strongest since 2011, when 15,000 people were killed in Japan.

Russian scientists reported that the Klyuchevskoy volcano erupted shortly after the earthquake.
“Red-hot lava is observed flowing down the western slope. There is a powerful glow above the volcano and explosions,” said Russia’s Geophysical Survey.

Wednesday’s quake was the strongest in the Kamchatka region since 1952, the regional seismic monitoring service said, warning of aftershocks of up to 7.5 magnitude.
The US Geological Survey said the quake was one of the 10 strongest tremors recorded since 1900.
It was followed by dozens of aftershocks that further shook the Russian Far East, including one of 6.9 magnitude.
The USGS said there was a 59 percent chance of an aftershock of more than 7.0 magnitude in the next week.
 

LONDON: The Palestine Solidarity Campaign on Wednesday condemned the UK prime minister’s framing of Palestinian statehood.

Keir Starmer pledged to recognize a Palestinian state in September if Israel fails to reach a ceasefire with Hamas, among other conditions.

Placing the Palestinian right to self-determination “within the context of Israel’s actions” is “shameful,” the PSC said in a statement, adding that it is an “inalienable right” that should be recognized regardless of Israel’s conduct.

Starmer’s apparent shift, which followed in French President Emmanuel Macron’s footsteps, “came in part because of intense pressure from the British public, expressed in the huge protest movement that has persevered over many months,” the PSC said.

Since the beginning of the Gaza war in October 2023, the PSC and a host of other campaign groups have led regular protest marches through British cities.

The protests have swelled in size amid mounting public anger over Israel’s conduct in Gaza, as well as the UK government’s perceived reluctance to take action against it.

Protesters have focused on British ties to Israel and its military, waging boycott campaigns against companies with ties to the Israel Defense Forces.

“Every British MP and government official is also aware of the fact that British-exported weapons are being used by the Israeli military in its brutality against Palestinian civilians and complete devastation of the Gaza Strip’s infrastructure,” the PSC said.

“British politicians are now bemoaning the images of horror, but continuing to act as partners in Israel’s genocide by maintaining trade with Israel, including in weapons and other military items, and by implementing limited sanctions on a few individual ministers, as though Israel’s genocide is being engineered and carried out by a ‘few bad apples.’”

The PSC condemned Starmer’s move this week as “grotesque,” and one that tells Palestinians: “State recognition may come, but only if and when many, many more of you are dead.”

Rather than representing a turning point, his decision is “simply more of the same,” the PSC said, describing the pledge as having been “added to the package of collusion and complicity with genocide.”

It called on the government to take immediate steps and “everything in their power” to secure an unconditional ceasefire in Gaza. The UK must also place a comprehensive weapons embargo on Israel, the PSC demanded.

“Keir Starmer claims support for the Palestinian right to self-determination while ensuring that Israel has all the means it needs to eradicate the Palestinian people and annex their land,” it said.

“The British public will not be fooled into holding out hope for the possibility of a symbolic gesture granted by the British government in September.”