India, July 30 -- A massive magnitude 8.8 earthquake struck on July 30, 2025, approximately 136 km east of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, Russia, triggering evacuations in a small town in the Sakhalin region. This seismic event, said to be the strongest in decades, immediately set off tsunami warning alarms across a vast swathe of the Pacific, including Japan, Peru, California, and Hawaii, among other destinations.

The immediate impact was felt keenly in Russia's port town of Severo-Kurilsk, home to roughly 2,000 residents, where three tsunami waves have already made landfall; the entire population had been evacuated. The region, known as the Kuril-Kamchatka arc, is no stranger to powerful tremors. It's a highly active seismic zone, recording...