Modest tsunami waves arrived in California on Wednesday, with no initial reports of damage, following a powerful earthquake that struck Tuesday off Russia’s east coast.

The highest tsunami waves reported on California shores as of 5:30 a.m. Pacific time were 4 feet in Crescent City while the highest waves in the United States were 5.7 feet in Kahului, Hawaii.

But neither state has seen major issues so far. In fact, Hawaii is lifting some evacuation orders. In California, some alerts were downgraded. Officials warn the wave action will continue for hours.

California’s Humboldt and Del Norte counties received the most severe warnings in the state.

Waves hit 2.5 feet in San Francisco and generally a foot or less in Southern California.

Around 7 a.m., tsunami advisories for Southern California were lifted. A tsunami advisory is in place along the Central Coast, from Santa Barbara County northward, including the San Francisco Bay Area, to the Oregon border.

A more-serious tsunami warning was lifted in Del Norte County, which is home to Crescent City.

The tsunami could last as long as 30 hours in Crescent City, where waves of up to 5 feet were predicted. Crescent City’s harbor was destroyed and one man died in a 2011 tsunami, and in 1964, a tsunami killed 11 people.

“This is not going to be a 1964 event that we’re looking at, destroying several blocks of the town,” Crescent City Manager Eric Weir said in an update shortly before 11 p.m. Tuesday. “However, it is going to be an event that creates a lot of disruption in the ocean, a lot of strong currents. We’re asking people to stay away from the beaches, stay away from the mouths of the river and any low-lying area.”

Residents were urged to evacuate boats in the Crescent City Harbor and drive their vehicles out of the Lighthouse Cove RV Park. A temporary evacuation point was established at the VFW Hall in Crescent City.

Another area that could see significant tsunami is Port San Luis in San Luis Obispo County, where a tsunami of 2 to 3.7 feet could hit. Waves of 1.3 feet and under were predicted for the rest of the California coastline.

At Pillar Point Harbor in Half Moon Bay, south of San Francisco, a time-lapse video showed sailboats bobbing up and down abruptly, over and over again, as tsunami waves swept in overnight.

“A tsunami is not just one wave,” the National Weather Service in the Bay Area said in a post on X. “It’s a packet of waves that can last for several hours. This rapid surging of water can create dangerous currents.”

Tsunami alerts were issued Tuesday afternoon after a magnitude-8.8 earthquake struck off Russia’s sparsely populated east coast, sending powerful waves slamming into buildings in Siberia and northeastern Japan. A magnitude-8.8 earthquake ranks as the sixth most powerful ever recorded.

“All warning systems were activated promptly, and evacuation of people from the areas from which they needed to be evacuated was organized for the tsunami,” said Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov.

According to the U.S. Tsunami Warning Center, alerts were in effect for the entire West Coast, including Washington and Oregon, as well as portions of British Columbia and Alaska.

The earthquake struck off of the eastern coast of Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula in eastern Siberia at 9:25 a.m. Wednesday local Russian time — which is 4:25 p.m. Tuesday Pacific time — generating strong tremors that injured several people, according to reporting by Reuters.

The epicenter was about 40 miles away from the Kamchatka Peninsula; 1,500 miles away from Tokyo; 1,900 miles from Anchorage; 3,100 miles away from Honolulu; 3,700 miles from San Francisco; and 4,100 miles from Los Angeles.

Initial tsunami waves began reaching Hawaii shortly after 7 p.m. local time — 10 p.m. Pacific — and measured as much as 4 feet in Kahului, Maui, and in Haleiwa, Oahu, according to the U.S. Tsunami Warning Center.

Hawaii Gov. Josh Green said that there had been “no waves of real consequence” at a news conference about an hour after the waves started arriving, but he warned that the state was not out of the woods yet.

“We don’t want anyone to let their guard down; we want to go another couple of hours,” he said. “As the waves cycle smaller and smaller, that’s how we’ll know that we’re ending this concern.”

All flights in and out of Maui were grounded for the night, he added.

Earlier Tuesday, roads were clogged with cars as sirens blared and Hawaii residents and visitors rushed to heed evacuation orders.

“Right now, we’re traumatized,” Dominga Advincula, a longtime resident of the foothill neighborhood where the Lahaina blaze ignited, told the Los Angeles Times on Tuesday afternoon. “Every hour, they make the sound of sirens for everybody to leave the ocean and it makes us traumatized again for what happened in 2023.”

She’d been sent home from her job at a Kaanapali hotel after the warnings blared. Nearby roads were crowded with people trying to get to higher ground, she said.

One of the first tsunami reports came in Hokkaido, Japan, where the Nemuro Hanasaki port experienced a 1-foot tsunami, according to NHK, the Japanese broadcaster. Video footage shared by Reuters showed buildings that appeared to be warehouses being swept away by strong tsunami currents in Russia.

A tsunami of up to 16 feet hit the Kamchatka Peninsula in Siberia, damaging buildings, including a kindergarten, according to Reuters. Japanese officials advised people to evacuate tsunami-prone areas along the country’s east coast, warning that waves of up to 10 feet could strike the coastline.

Potential waves were forecast for the early hours of Wednesday morning, between midnight and 1 a.m. for Monterey and San Francisco, then were set to reach the Los Angeles harbor, Newport Beach, Oceanside and La Jolla shortly after 1 a.m.

Officials warned that the first tsunami wave might not be the largest. In fact, the first tsunami wave usually is not the highest one, and tsunamis can last for hours.

In the devastating tsunami of 1964 that hit Crescent City, people were lulled into a false sense of security after a series of smaller waves, and some had returned to start cleaning up when the fourth wave hit. Surges as high as 21 feet above the average low tide smashed the city, washing away 29 city blocks and killing at least 11 people.

L.A. Mayor Karen Bass said she was in touch with coastal leaders and the Port of L.A. about overnight preparations and urged residents to sign up for emergency alerts at NotifyLA.org. Los Angeles residents were instructed to stay away from beaches, harbors, marinas and waterways until noon Wednesday.

In Long Beach, beaches were closed at 10 p.m. and the public was asked to stay away until an all-clear was given. At midnight Wednesday, the area between Alamitos Bay to the Pacific Ocean was also closed, with officials worried about harbors and marinas subject to fast-moving surges.

Officials were asking homeless people along beaches and local riverbeds to relocate due to the tsunami risk.

It only takes 6 inches of fast-moving water to knock over an adult and 2 feet of fast-moving water to carry away most vehicles.

“Strong currents can injure and drown people in or near the water and damage and destroy boats and infrastructure in harbors,” the National Tsunami Hazard Mitigation Program says.

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(Los Angeles Times staff writers Julia Wick, Connor Sheets, Ruben Vives and Jenny Jarvie contributed to this report.)

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