Moscow ? A 7.7-magnitude earthquake hit a distant, sparsely populated region of Russia’s Far East today, and there were reports in at least one coastal village of damaged buildings – including a school and a hospital.

The quake hit about 12:30 p.m. local time in the Koryak region, nearly 4,350 miles east of Moscow and some 625 miles north of the largest city in the area, Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, said Oleg Kotosanov, a duty officer with the regional emergency situations ministry.

Russian news agencies said buildings had been damaged in the coastal village of Tilichiki, including a school, a hospital and an airport. The agencies also reported that there were some injuries.

By comparison, the great San Francisco earthquake of 1906, which destroyed more than half of the city’s buildings and left between 3,000 and 6,000 people dead, was estimated at a magnitude of between 7.7 and 7.9.