Between 5 and 6 p.m. Tuesday evening, cell phones across Grays Harbor County erupted with emergency notifications of a tsunami watch that was quickly escalated to an advisory after an 8.8 magnitude earthquake was reported off Russia’s Far Eastern Kamchatka coast.

The Washington Emergency Management Division, Grays Harbor County Emergency Management and local authorities quickly assessed the situation and alerted residents via social media, mobile phone alerts, email and radio and television broadcasts.

La Push, Neah Bay, Long Beach, Moclips, Westport, Port Angeles, Port Townsend and Bellingham were warned to expect significant wave action shortly before and after midnight. As international, national and local media outlets monitored the situation, it was estimated that waves of 1-3 feet could come ashore at those locales.

However, no significant oceanic activity was reported along the Washington coastline and all tsunami advisories for the state were lifted by 10:40 a.m. Wednesday.

According to Reuters, the earthquake triggered tsunami warnings as far away as French Polynesia and Chile and damaged buildings and injured several people in the remote Russian region, while much of Japan’s eastern seaboard was ordered to evacuate, as were parts of Hawaii.

Scientific American reported that the tsunami waves weren’t as large as first feared because “the specific fault that ruptured produced pretty much exactly the tsunami it was capable of making, even if we intuitively feel like the effect should have been worse.” Robin George Andrews’ article concluded, “What matters most is that the tsunami warnings went out to those in harm’s way quickly and accurately conveyed the times at which the tsunamis would arrive at each coastline.”