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All tsunami warnings issued after a major quake in the southern Pacific Ocean have been canceled, according to the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center.

The alerts for the southwestern Pacific Islands were issued early Thursday (local time) after an earthquake measuring about 8.0 in magnitude shook the region.

The quake's epicenter was about 153 kilometers (95 miles) off the coast of Tonga, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

It struck Thursday at 4:26 a.m. in Tonga (Wednesday at 1526 GMT).

The USGS said it issued the warning "based only on the earthquake evaluation."

Paula Chipman, an American tourist in Tonga's capital, Nukualofa, called it "a major, major shaker" and said it was impossible to assess the damage on the island because it was still dark.

"We felt it. We felt it huge," she said.

One guest at her hotel hurt his foot when he jumped from a balcony to get out, Chipman said.

"Everybody was bailing out of the building," she said.

Chipman said the area around her hotel was without power in the early morning darkness, except for several hotels -- including hers -- which were apparently running on back-up generators. Guests had heard "absolutely nothing, zero" from authorities on the island in the aftermath of the quake.

On the island of Fiji, to the west of Tonga, several people reported no damage. One local journalist said he felt a tremor, but said the local seismologists had recorded a much weaker quake.

David Applegate, senior science adviser for the USGS, said the earthquake was likely to affect only "a relatively small population."

"So far, we've got five responses in four city areas on the islands of Tonga, with intensities ranging from fairly light shaking up to very strong shaking," Applegate said.

The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center issued alerts for the islands of Tonga, Niue, American Samoa, Samoa, Fiji and Wallis-Futuna.

The center's most recent report said a tsunami could have begun to affect the islands as early as Wednesday afternoon.

An earlier warning for New Zealand was canceled, and an advisory for the Hawaiian Islands said only that coastal areas might experience "small sea-level changes."

"When no major waves are observed for two hours after the estimated time of arrival or damaging waves have not occurred for at least two hours, then local authorities can assume the threat is passed," the tsunami center's last bulletin said. "Danger to boats and coastal structures can continue for several hours due to rapid currents."

Applegate said the magnitude of the quake was larger than the 1989 temblor that struck the San Francisco Bay area, but "considerably smaller" than the December 26, 2004, quake off the Indonesian island of Sumatra.

That quake -- with a magnitude of 9.0 -- triggered a massive tsunami that spread across the Indian Ocean, killing more than 200,000 people in a dozen countries.

"This is still a large earthquake, but it's not the kind of monster that we saw off Sumatra," he said.