M4.7 earthquake near Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, Russia

A magnitude 4.7 earthquake struck 150 km (93 mi) southeast of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, Russia on Friday, October 9, 2026 at 16:59 UTC, at a depth of 10 km (6 mi), according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Shallow quakes like this one shake the surface hardest.
Why here?
This earthquake struck about 77 km (48 mi) from the boundary between the North American and Pacific plates. Most earthquakes happen along plate boundaries like this one, where the pieces of Earth’s outer shell collide, pull apart or grind past each other. Stress builds up over years until the rock suddenly slips.
The red lines on the map are plate boundaries.
How strong was it?
Magnitude is logarithmic: each whole step releases about 32 times more energy. This magnitude 4.7 released roughly the energy of 169 tons of TNT. That is about 11 times the energy of a magnitude 4.0, a quake people nearby feel but that rarely causes damage. The strongest earthquake ever recorded, magnitude 9.5 in Chile in 1960, released about 16,000,000 times more than this one.
Aftershocks
In the first 17 days after it, USGS recorded no smaller earthquakes of magnitude 2.5 or more within 100 km (62 mi).
A stronger magnitude 5.3 followed on October 24 at 20:35 UTC, about 75 km (47 mi) away, so this one is now considered a foreshock.
Outside the United States, USGS mainly lists quakes of about magnitude 4 and up, so smaller aftershocks there are undercounted.
Earthquake history here
Before this earthquake, USGS had recorded 219 earthquakes of magnitude 6 or larger within 300 km (186 mi) since 1900. The strongest:
- M9.0 · 89 km ESE of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, RussiaNovember 4, 1952
- M8.8 · 2025 Kamchatka Peninsula, Russia EarthquakeJuly 29, 2025
- M8.4 · 1923 Kamchatka, Russia EarthquakeFebruary 3, 1923
Official details, updates and the shaking map: USGS event page.
See every earthquake on October 9, 2026 or earthquakes by day.
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