HONOLULU (AP) – A magnitude 5.7 earthquake struck the world’s largest active volcano on Friday, Mauna Loa on the Big Island of Hawaii, knocking items off shelves and cutting power in a nearby town but not immediately prompting reports of serious damage.
The earthquake, which didn’t cause a tsunami and which the United States Geological Survey initially reported as magnitude 6.3, was centred on Mauna Loa’s southern flank at a depth of 37 kilometres (km), two km southwest of Pahala.
“It shook us bad to where it wobbled some knees a little bit,” said the manager of the Kona Canoe Club restaurant in the ocean-side community of Kona, on the island’s western side Derek Nelson.
“It shook all the windows in the village.”
There was a power outage affecting about 300 customers in Naalehu that appeared to be related to the earthquake, said spokesperson for Hawaiian Electric Company, Darren Pai.
The earthquake struck after 10am local time, less than two hours before an unrelated quake with a preliminary magnitude of 4.6 shook Southern California.
Mauna Loa last erupted in late 2022.
It’s one of five volcanoes that make up the Big Island, which is the southernmost in the Hawaiian archipelago.
