"The first waves began hitting the U.S. West Coast after an 8.8-magnitude quake off Russia’s coast put a swath of Pacific nations on alert."

Live updates from the NYT. Gift link, here.

ADDED: "The Kamchatka Peninsula is so known in Russia for its wilderness and lack of communication links that it has become a byword for 'remote.'... Unlike Turkey and Syria, countries that have been devastated by earthquakes in recent years, Kamchatka is sparsely populated — and the Soviet-era housing there typically has only one or two stories.... Moving around Kamchatka is difficult: The peninsula has just a few hundred miles of paved roads, mostly around major towns, and there are no roads to cross the swampland separating it from the mainland. Kamchatka has become a popular destination for tourism in recent years, with travel companies offering camping, helicopter rides and off-road tours for the visitors to see the volcanoes or admire the pristine forests and rivers.... A tour guide in the Kuril Islands, Yelena Kotenko, posted a video of tourists running out screaming from a two-story building as tiles rained down from its roof. The tourists went up the side of a volcano while a tsunami was rising on the coast, she said."