An earthquake with magnitude 6.2 occurred near Port Heiden,100 kilometers northeast of Chignik Lake, southwestern Alaska.
A strong 6.2 magnitude earthquake shook a lightly populated remote region of southwestern Alaska, the US Geological Survey that monitors quakes worldwide reported.
The quake struck at 0550 GMT on Saturday on the Aleutian arc some 654 kilometers southwest of Anchorage, and 100 kilometers northeast of Chignik Lake, Alaska.
The National Tsunami Warning Center said that no watch, warning or advisory would be issued for the quake.
"A tsunami is NOT expected to be generated by this earthquake," the Center said.
The earthquake epicenter was 58 miles below the surface, the Alaska Earthquake Center reported.
Comment: The authorities almost instantly reported that it was definitely not the result of a terrorist's bomb. Funny how they can know such things for certain so soon. It's almost like they have mystical powers of foresight...
In any event, we could be looking at an unusual, though natural, cause here.
Note that firefighters had been tackling a fire on the ground floor of the building next door for over an hour before the explosion. This is reminiscent of the West, Texas fertilizer plant explosion in 2013.
Unlike that event, however, there was no apparent 'missile' hitting the site from above.
While a gas cooker cannot obliterate an apartment block, a surge of gas and/or power through the mains may have provided some of the additional 'fuel' behind the force of the blast.
Residential and industrial buildings have been exploding all over the place in recent years. It's an interesting 'quirk of history' that terrorism has been rolled out globally, at this time, thus providing a plausible 'explanation' for events that are largely the result of natural changes in our environment - not least, 'Earth opening up' in the form of increased earthquakes, sinkholes and methane outgassing, and 'the sky falling' in the form of increased meteor events and atmospheric electric discharges.