Residents fled inland as ports flooded on Kamchatka near the quake's epicenter, while frothy, white waves washed up on the shore in northern Japan. Cars jammed streets and highways in Honolulu, with standstill traffic even in areas away from the sea.

A volcano in Russia’s far east erupted on Wednesday, Russian scientists said, hours after a major quake prompted evacuations and tsunami alerts across parts of the Pacific coast. Eruptions of the Klyuchevskoy volcano – the highest active in Europe and Asia – are quite common,