The quake's epicenter, the officer said, was not far from the village of Telichiki, which has a population of about 2,000. The officer said there were reports of minor damage to an airstrip at the local airport.

The temblor struck at 12:25 p.m. Friday (7:25 p.m. Thursday ET), the USGS reported. Its epicenter was 125 miles (200 kilometers) northeast of Il'pyrskiy, Russia, and nearly 4,000 miles north-northeast of Moscow. The quake's depth was recorded at a relatively shallow 26.7 miles, said Bruce Presgrave, a USGS geophysicist in Golden, Colorado.

He estimated that some 2,000 people lived close enough to the epicenter to have felt it "really strongly." Il'pyrskiy has only a few hundred residents. In addition, the time of the quake - shortly after noon - means few people would have been caught unawares as they slept, he said.