Northeast Japan was rocked by a strong 7.4 magnitude earthquake on Wednesday evening that also triggered a small tsunami along much of the east coast, killing at least one person and injuring dozens. Early Thursday morning, the authorities lifted the tsunami warning and electricity, cut overnight in more than two million homes, was restored. At least one person died in the coastal town of Soma and dozens more were injured in the quake, Japan’s Kyodo news agency reported, with authorities saying they received numerous emergency calls.
An epicenter 60 km deep under the Pacific
According to the Japanese Meteorological Agency (JMA), the hypocenter of the earthquake that occurred at 11:36 p.m. Wednesday (2:36 p.m. GMT), re-evaluated at 7.4 (against 7.3 initially), was 60 km deep under the ocean. Pacific off Fukushima Prefecture, where a nuclear power plant was devastated by a tsunami in 2011.
This agency immediately issued a warning for waves one meter high. Waves of 30 cm were finally measured in Ishinomaki, in Miyagi prefecture, north of Fukushima, according to the JMA, which had called on residents to stay away from the seafront. “The police and the services of relief were overwhelmed with calls in Fukushima and Miyagi,” government spokesman Hirokazu Matsuno said at a press briefing.
The population urged to remain vigilant
Authorities were still checking the extent of the damage, he added, urging the population to remain vigilant over the next few days in anticipation of possible strong aftershocks. Small aftershocks were recorded in the northeast in the first hours after the initial quake, and evacuation instructions to shelters were issued in some localities in the region. “Please follow the news about the earthquake, stay away from the coast and take measures to protect yourself,” also recommended Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida.
No anomaly was detected at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, severely damaged by a gigantic tsunami caused by a magnitude 9 earthquake on March 11, 2011, according to the Japanese Nuclear Safety Agency (NRA). At the other nuclear power plant in the county, Fukushima Daini, also shut down since 2011, as well as at the Onagawa power plant (Miyagi county), pumps for spent fuel cooling pools briefly stopped working but they quickly restored to working order, the NRA later said.
A high-speed train derailed
The earthquake, which was felt for a long time and strongly including in Tokyo, initially deprived more than two million homes of electricity in Kanto, the large region encompassing the capital and its neighboring departments, according to the operator Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco ), but power was fully restored to that area a few hours later. Some 157,000 homes were also initially without electricity in the northeast of the country, according to the company Tohoku Electric Power. Rail company JR East has reported significant disruptions to its network. A shinkansen, the Japanese high-speed train, notably derailed north of the city of Fukushima, according to JR East, which did not immediately report injuries.
And in the city of Sendai (northeast), a wall of the historic castle of Aoba collapsed, according to images from Japanese television. Japan, still haunted by March 11, 2011, observed a minute of silence last Friday in memory of this major disaster. The disaster had left more than 18,500 people dead and missing – mainly due to the tsunami – and forced more than 165,000 people from Fukushima prefecture to evacuate their homes due to radioactive emissions from the damaged nuclear plant, where the cores of three reactors had melted .
More than 30,000 displaced people
Local authorities still count 33,365 displaced people today, 80% of whom live outside the department of Fukushima. At the time of the disaster, 12% of Fukushima Prefecture had been declared hazardous due to radiation. Extensive decontamination work has been carried out, and today the prohibited areas only represent 2.4% of the prefecture, but many localities remain underpopulated.
Located at the crossroads of several major tectonic plates on the Pacific “Ring of Fire”, Japan is regularly hit by earthquakes and has strict construction standards to ensure that its buildings are able to withstand strong tremors.