For such a powerful earthquake, it didn't do all that much.
Muffled because it was deep underground, the quake with a preliminary magnitude of 6.4 did little more than rattle store shelves and trigger house alarms as it shook Anchorage and a wide area of southern Alaska Thursday.It did knock things from the shelves and send office workers running into the streets, but no injuries were reported.
The temblor was centered 125 miles southwest of Anchorage but was nearly 90 miles deep, said Bruce Turner, a geophysicist at the Alaska Tsunami Warning Center in Palmer.
He said the average quake is centered 15 to 25 miles below ground, and this one's depth and distance from populated areas probably lessened the damage.
In Anchorage, the shaking lasted about 45 seconds. The quake was felt in Kodiak, Fairbanks, Palmer and Cordova.