7.7-Magnitude Quake Hits Russia

31 Injured, No Deaths Reported; Largest Quake Since 1900

(AP) 
Another Koryak emergency official, Viktor Styopkin, said minor injuries had been reported.

Styopkin said the quake had knocked out telephone service in the region, because the local exchange was located in Tilichiki, a village of 2,000. The quake also made the village's airfield unusable, he said: one-third of the runway was cracked and the rest was under water.

Reconnaissance helicopters were sent to check the damage, and more than 300 emergency response workers were flown to the region from Khabarovsk to deliver tents, radiators and other supplies and to help restore communications. Planes carrying medicines, diesel generators, blankets, warm clothes and more tents were set to leave Ramenskoye, near Moscow, on Friday evening.

Russian news agencies said buildings including schools and a hospital in Tilichiki had been damaged, along with municipal electric and heating systems.

"It's the largest event in this area since 1900," U.S. Geological Survey spokeswoman A.B. Wade told the AP. "It's a sparsely populated area; up to 2,000 people were exposed to intensive shaking."

The USGS said the initial quake occurred about 30 miles below the surface of the Earth.

In 1995, a quake of magnitude 7.5 leveled the town of Neftegorsk in northern Sakhalin Island, killing some 2,000 people.

By comparison, the great San Francisco earthquake of 1906, which destroyed more than half of the city's buildings and left between 3,000 and 6,000 people dead, was estimated at a magnitude of between 7.7 and 7.9.

Emergency Situations Ministry officials sent rescuers and supplies to the Kamchatka Peninsula in summer 2005 in anticipation of a major earthquake, Russian media reported. They were to have been on standby until mid-December of last year.