ANCHORAGE, Alaska -- A large earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 7.0 struck Alaska near Anchorage on Friday morning, damaging roads and buildings, knocking out power and sending people fleeing.
There were no reports of any deaths or serious injuries.
The U.S. Geological Survey said the first and more powerful quake was centered about 7 miles north of Anchorage, Alaska's largest city, with a population of about 300,000. People ran from their offices or took cover under desks.
"It had my heart racing and I felt a bit of motion sickness afterwards. I was scared!" April Pearce wrote on Instagram after being shaken at her desk in the town of Soldotna.
Several cars crashed at a major intersection in Wasilla, north of Anchorage, during the earthquake.
A tsunami warning was issued along Alaska's southern coast. Police in Kodiak -- a city of 6,100 people on Kodiak Island, 250 miles south of Anchorage -- warned residents to evacuate to higher ground immediately because of the risk of a wave hitting within about 10 minutes.
Michael Burgy, a senior technician with the National Tsunami Warning Center in Palmer, Alaska, said the warning was automatically generated based on the quake's size and proximity to shore. Scientists monitored gauges to see whether the quake generated big waves. Because there were none, they canceled the warning within about an hour and a half.
The quake broke store windows in Anchorage, opened cracks in a two-story building downtown, disrupted electrical service and disabled traffic lights, snarling traffic.
Anchorage Police Chief Justin Doll said he had been told that parts of the Glenn Highway, a scenic route that runs northeast out of the city past farms, mountains and glaciers, had "completely disappeared."
Officers were dispatched across the region to handle "multiple situations," the Police Department said. A journalist with the Anchorage news station KTVA shared a photo of the damage in the newsroom, where pieces of the ceiling had apparently fallen on desks and the floor.
The collapse of the Minnesota Drive off-ramp near Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport drew a number of spectators.
Keri Scaggs and her neighbor RieAnn Fullwood snapped selfies in front of the collapsed road as a third neighbor, still in her bathrobe, waited for them in the car. Scaggs clutched a bottle of Kentucky straight bourbon whiskey, while Fullwood snuggled her cat. The pair fled their cabins in the Spenard neighborhood after the tsunami warning.
"I grabbed the essentials," Scaggs said. "Birth certificate, passport and Pappy Van Winkle," she said, cradling the whiskey bottle in the crook of her elbow.
All flights in and out of the airport were suspended for hours after the quake knocked out telephone service and forced the evacuation of the control tower. And the 800-mile Alaska oil pipeline was shut down while crews were sent to inspect it for damage.
The Anchorage School District canceled classes and asked parents to pick up their children while it examined buildings for gas leaks or other damage.
The district also canceled classes for Monday and Tuesday.
"Take care of your families," the district's superintendent, Deena Bishop, wrote on its website.
Fifteen-year-old Sadie Blake and other members of the Homer High School wrestling team were at an Anchorage school gymnasium waiting for a tournament to start when the bleachers started rocking and the lights went out. People started running down the bleachers in the dark, trying to get out.
"It was a gym full of screams," said team chaperone Ginny Grimes.
When it was over, Sadie said, there was only one thing she could do: "I started crying."
Jonathan Lettow was waiting with his 5-year-old daughter and other children for the school bus near their home in Wasilla when the quake struck. The children got on the ground while Lettow tried to keep them calm.
"It's one of those things where in your head, you think, 'OK, it's going to stop,' and you say that to yourself so many times in your head that finally you think, 'OK, maybe this isn't going to stop,'" he said.
Soon after the shaking stopped, the school bus pulled up and the children boarded, but the driver stopped at a bridge and refused to go across because of deep cracks in the road, Lettow said.
All Alaska Railroad operations were shut down due to severe damage at the railroad's Anchorage operations center, including the dispatch center, according to spokesman Tim Sullivan. The center was closed by flooding from burst pipes, and the power was out.
No trains were running when the quake hit. Service can't resume until crews assess damage, Sullivan said. It will be a day or two before that happens.
Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin tweeted that her home in Wasilla was damaged: "Our family is intact -- house is not. I imagine that's the case for many, many others."
Officials opened an Anchorage convention center as an emergency shelter. Gov. Bill Walker, who said he was in an office building elevator when the quake struck, issued a disaster declaration.
He said he spoke with President Donald Trump and was assured by the White House that help was on the way.
Cereal boxes and packages of batteries littered the floor of a grocery store, and picture frames and mirrors were knocked from living room walls.
People went back inside after the first earthquake struck, but a 5.7-magnitude aftershock about five minutes later sent them running back into the streets. A series of smaller aftershocks followed.
In Kenai, southwest of Anchorage, Brandon Slaton was alone at home and soaking in the bathtub when the earthquake struck. Slaton, who said he weighs 209 pounds, said it created a powerful back-and-forth sloshing that threw him out of the tub.
His 120-pound mastiff panicked and tried to run down the stairs, but the house was swaying so much that the dog was thrown off its feet and into a wall and tumbled to the base of the stairs, Slaton said.
Slaton ran into his son's room after the shaking stopped and found his fish tank shattered and the fish on the floor, gasping for breath. He grabbed it and put it in another bowl.
"It was anarchy," he said. "There's no pictures left on the walls, there's no power, there's no fish tank left. Everything that's not tied down is broke."
Alaska was the site of the most powerful earthquake ever recorded in the U.S. The 9.2-magnitude quake on March 27, 1964, was centered about 75 miles east of Anchorage. It and the tsunami it triggered claimed about 130 lives.
The state averages 40,000 earthquakes per year, with more large quakes than the 49 other states combined. Southern Alaska has a high risk of earthquakes because the Earth's plates slide past each other under the region.
Alaska has been hit by a number of powerful quakes over 7.0 in recent decades, including a 7.9-magnitude earthquake that struck in January southeast of Kodiak Island. But it is rare for a quake this big to strike so close to such a heavily populated area.
David Harper said he was getting some coffee at a store when the low rumble began and intensified into something that sounded "like the building was just going to fall apart." He ran for the exit with other patrons.
"People who were outside were actively hugging each other," he said. "You could tell that it was a bad one."
Information for this article was contributed by Rachel D'Oro, Dan Joling, Becky Bohrer, Mark Thiessen, Jennifer Kelleher, Gene Johnson, Gillian Flaccus, Rachel La Corte and John Antczak of The Associated Press; by staff members of the Anchorage Daily News; and by Jeannette Lee Falsey, Mark Berman, Angela Fritz and Dan Lamothe of The Washington Post.
A Section on 12/01/2018