*Oprah Winfrey’s spokesperson has dismissed rumors that a private road on her Maui estate was inaccessible during a recent tsunami warning, triggered by a massive 8.8-magnitude earthquake off Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula.
“As soon as we heard the tsunami warnings, we contacted local law enforcement and FEMA to ensure the road was opened. Any reports otherwise are false,” it read, Deadline reports.
The earthquake, one of the strongest ever recorded, struck early Wednesday, sparking tsunami alerts across the Pacific, including Hawaii, Japan, and the U.S. West Coast, per The Associated Press. Maui Police corroborated Oprah’s team, stating, “Oprah’s road is open to get Upcountry.” The alerts have since been downgraded to advisories, with no major damage or serious injuries reported.
Oprah’s $100 million Maui property, located among estates owned by celebrities like Jeff Bezos and Woody Harrelson, features a private road linking Wailea’s coast to Kula’s uplands. Social media posts falsely claimed the road remained closed as residents sought higher ground. The earthquake also caused Russia’s largest volcano to erupt, adding to the region’s turmoil.
Tsunamis occur when large earthquakes displace the ocean floor, but their size depends on factors such as fault movement or underwater landslides, not just quake magnitude, explained geophysicist Brandon Shuck.
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“The tsunami that’s generated is connected to how much of the sea floor actually moved,” he said. While this quake produced a trans-Pacific tsunami, its waves remained small.
Shuck noted the event’s significance, ranking it among the top 10 largest earthquakes ever recorded. “Nevertheless, the earthquake did produce a trans-Pacific tsunami ‒ a tsunami that can be detected from traveling all the way across the Pacific Ocean. This is still a huge and notable event,” he said. “We all should be thankful that this was not worse, and there’s a lot of lessons we can take away from this.”
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