SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 3 (UPI) -- Russia's Far East holds seismic
and volcanic hazards that could trigger tsunamis and pose a risk
to the rest of the Pacific Basin, a U.S. researcher says.
Studies in the last 20 years have revealed the dangerous side of
the Kamchatka Peninsula and the Kuril Islands, sources of
powerful earthquakes and volcanic activity long kept hidden from
outsiders by Russia, Jody Bourgeois, a University of Washington
professor of Earth and space sciences, says. A magnitude-9
earthquake in that region in 1952 caused significant damage
elsewhere on the Pacific Rim, she said, and even less-powerful
quakes have had effects throughout the Pacific Basin. "There's
not a large population in the Russian Far East, but it's
obviously important to the people who live there," she said in a
university release. "Thousands of people were killed in tsunamis
because of the earthquake in 1952. And tsunamis don't stay
home." A tsunami caused by a smaller 2006 earthquake crossed the
Pacific and did more than $10