A volcano in Russia’s eastern Kamchatka region has erupted for the first time in 450 years, the national emergency authority announced. This event comes just days after a magnitude 8.8 earthquake, one of the strongest ever recorded, struck the area.
Russian state media footage shows a massive ash column erupting from the Krasheninnikov volcano. According to the Smithsonian Institution’s Global Volcanism Program, its last known eruption occurred in 1550.
The Kamchatka Ministry of Emergency Situations stated on Telegram that the ash plume reached an estimated altitude of 6 kilometers. “The column is spreading eastward from the volcano towards the Pacific Ocean. There are no populated areas along its path, and no ashfall has been recorded in inhabited localities,” the ministry confirmed.
The ministry also assigned the volcano an “orange” aviation hazard code, indicating potential flight disruptions in the region. This eruption occurred after the nearby Klyuchevskoy volcano, the tallest active volcano in Eurasia, became active on Wednesday. Klyuchevskoy eruptions are relatively common, with at least 18 occurring since 2000 per the Global Volcanism Program.
Both recent eruptions followed one of the most powerful earthquakes on record, which hit on Wednesday. That quake triggered tsunami alerts and prompted evacuations of millions from coastal areas spanning Japan, Hawaii, and Ecuador. Russian authorities reported the worst damage occurred domestically, where a tsunami struck the port of Severo-Kurilsk and flooded a fish processing plant. The magnitude 8.8 quake impacted Petropavlovsk on the Kamchatka peninsula, marking the strongest tremor since the 2011 magnitude 9.1 quake off Japan that caused a deadly tsunami killing over 15,000 people.