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Latest Japanese quake causes injuries but no major damage
Temblor much less powerful than the magnitude-9.0 quake in 2011.
Ken Moritsugu, The Associated Press on November 22, 2016
Coastal residents returned home from higher ground, and fishing boats to port, after tsunami warnings were lifted along Japan’s Pacific coast following Monday’s magnitude-7.4 earthquake. The earthquake gave Tokyo – 240 kilometres away – a good shake, but was much less powerful than the magnitude-9.0 quake in 2011, and only moderate tsunami waves reached shore.
The Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant, which leaked radiation for kilometres (miles) after the 2011 tsunami, reported no abnormalities. Decommissioning work on the destroyed reactors was suspended and the site inspected.
At least 14 people were reported injured, three with broken bones, and Japanese TV showed items scattered on the floor in a store and books fallen from shelves in a library.
On the coast, lines of cars snaked away in the pre-dawn darkness after authorities urged residents to seek higher ground immediately.
The first tsunami waves hit about an hour later. The highest one, at 1.4 metres (4.6 feet), reached Sendai Bay about two hours after the quake. By comparison, the waves in 2011 were 10 to 20 metres (30 to 60 feet) high.
The evacuation appeared to proceed calmly. Katushiro Abe, a 47-year-old tourism official in Ishinomaki, a city hit hard by the 2011 tsunami, was on the early shift and already in the office, but his wife and teenage daughter fled their home.
He said his family jumped in a car and drove to the foot of a nearby hill and rushed up.
Tsunami alerts have been issued at least two times since 2011, he said, so his family was prepared and wasn’t that alarmed. “We stayed in touch by email,” he said.
It was the largest earthquake in northeastern Japan since the one in 2011 and some large aftershocks the same day. The U.S. Geological Survey measured Tuesday’s quake at a lower magnitude 6.9.
The Japan Meteorological Agency described it as an aftershock of the 2011 quake, which triggered a tsunami that killed about 18,000 people and wiped out entire neighbourhoods.
“Aftershocks could continue not only for five years but as long as 100 years,” Yasuhiro Umeda, a Kyoto University seismologist, said on Japanese broadcaster NTV.
TEPCO, the utility that operates the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant, said a swelling of the tide of up to 1 metre (3 feet) was detected offshore.
The plant is being decommissioned after the 2011 tsunami sent three of its reactors into meltdown, but the site remains at risk as the utility figures out how to remove still-radioactive fuel rods and debris and what to do with the melted reactor cores.
At the nearby Fukushima Dai-ni plant, TEPCO said a pump that supplies cooling water to a spent fuel pool stopped working, but a backup pump was employed after about 90 minutes, and the temperature rose less than one degree.
Naohiro Masuda, head of TEPCO’s decommissioning unit, said he believes a safety system shut off the pump automatically as the water in the pool shook.
Latest Japanese quake causes injuries but no major damage
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