Anchorage, Alaska — A violent earthquake slammed a remote area of Alaska's interior on Sunday, delivering a jolt so strong that it rattled communities in the Yukon and created waves on lakes and ponds as far away as Louisiana.

The magnitude-7.9 quake, one of the strongest ever recorded in the United States, occurred about 1:13 p.m. Alaska time and was centred on the Denali Fault 145 kilometres south of Fairbanks. It lasted about 30 seconds and was strongly felt in Anchorage, about 435 kilometres to the south.

"It shook so bad you could not stand up on the front porch," said Jay Capps, a grocery store owner between Tok and Glennallen in the southeastern part of the state. "It sounded like the trees were breaking roots under the ground."

Only one minor injury was reported, but the quake did considerable damage to Alaska's infrastructure. The tremor opened two-metre cracks in highways and roads, shook homes and damaged supports to the Trans-Alaska Pipeline.

Officials manually shut down the pipeline after the quake, although no leaks were reported, and it was still out of service Monday. The oil flow can be manually stopped for maintenance or other reasons without affecting oil deliveries.

The tremor was also felt in the Yukon, rattling Whitehorse and surrounding communities.

"As of now, we haven't received any reports of any structural damage or any injuries or anything like that," RCMP Constable Troy Byrt said. "I think in Beaver Creek, which is about five hours from here (Whitehorse), I think it was a little more severe there.

Michelle Wingenbach, a clerk at the 1202 Motor Inn in Beaver Creek, about 30 kilometres from the Alaska border, said the shaking was strong in the community of about 120 people.

"Everything fell on the floor and the lights were swaying back and forth," Ms. Wingenbach said. "There were people in the restaurant and the water was splashing out of their glasses.

"It was a violent jerking. The ground was shaking, the buildings, you could feel them moving. You had to sit down because it was moving a lot."

Whitehorse firefighter Jack Boily was sitting in the downtown firehall during the quake.

"I've been here 52 years, and that's the worst one I've felt in Whitehorse. It shook pictures on the walls," Mr. Boily said. "It was very, very noticeable."

Bruce Turner of the West Coast and Alaska Tsunami Warning Center said the earthquake did not generate a tsunami.

But the quake did create a ripple effect thousands of kilometres away — from the lakes in the Seattle area to the bayous of Louisiana.

In the New Orleans area — more than 4,800 kilometres away — residents saw water slosh about as a result of the quake's awesome power.

On Seattle's Lake Union, more than 2,250 kilometres south of the epicentre, waves shook some houseboats loose from their moorings and slammed them into docks. At least one boat incurred thousands of dollars in damage.

Experts say such an effect is common during powerful quakes.

"This earthquake was shallow, and the energy went directly into the surface and that is what causes these effects so far away," said Dale Grant, a geophysicist with U.S. Geological Survey's National Earthquake Information Center in Golden, Colo.

Mr. Grant said he received calls from nuclear power facilities in various states, including Minnesota and Washington, that reported unusual water movement.

Meanwhile, many roads in Alaska developed wide cracks, including the Alaska Highway near Northway, about 400 kilometres southeast of Fairbanks.

The Richardson Highway, which parallels the pipeline between Valdez and Fairbanks, was closed near Paxson after gaps opened that were half a metre to almost two metres wide and 1.5 metres deep. About 30 kilometres north, the ground on one side of the highway had dropped more than half a metre.

The worst reports of damage were along a three-kilometre stretch of the Tok Cutoff, where numerous rock slides and hundreds of metres of almost two-metre-wide openings in the road could be seen.

Mike Heatwole, spokesman for the Alyeska Pipeline Service Co., said officials would know by midmorning Monday how long it will take to restart the pipeline. He did not know whether North Slope crude oil deliveries would be disrupted.

Earthquakes above magnitude 7.0 are considered major — capable of widespread, heavy damage.

In 1964, the Good Friday earthquake left 131 people dead in Alaska. Current measurements put that quake's magnitude at 9.2.

Moderate earthquakes also shook the U.S. Midwest, Indonesia and Pakistan earlier Sunday, but the activity is not related nor unusual, said Waverly Person, geophysicist at U.S. Geological Survey.

"On any given day, we located about 50 earthquakes throughout the world," Mr. Person said. "This to us is pretty normal."