A strong magnitude 7.2 earthquake struck off the coast of northeastern Japan at a depth of 60 km on Saturday evening at 6:09 p.m.
In Miyagi Prefecture, where at least one person was injured, the quake measured up to a strong 5 on the Japanese seismic intensity scale to 7.
Tsunami waves of up to 1 meter may have reached the Miyagi Prefecture coast shortly after 6:30 p.m., according to NHK. All tsunami warnings were lifted by 7:30 p.m.
Due to the tsunami advisory, the town of Watari in the prefecture issued an evacuation order covering 2,527 homes and 6,911 residents.
Two hundred homes in Kurihara, Miyagi Prefecture were without power, NHK said. The quake caused the Tohoku Shinkansen to suspend services. Services were expected to resume around 10 p.m.
The central government has set up a crisis management center at the Prime Minister's Office, and is working with related ministries, agencies and local governments to collect information on any damage caused by the quake. In Ofunato, Iwate Prefecture, where the quake registered a lower 5, the city has opened evacuation centers at 69 locations.
Municipal fire officials in Miyagi reported no damage from the quake as of 6:30 p.m., but were continuing to gather information. No abnormalities were found at nuclear plants in eastern and northeastern Japan, according to their operators.
The tremor was also felt in Tokyo, where it registered up to a 3 on the Japanese scale.
The quake comes nine days after the region marked the 10th anniversary of the magnitude 9.0 Great East Japan Earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster that devastated the region and killed over 15,000 people.
A little over a month ago, a 7.3 temblor struck off neighboring Fukushima Prefecture. The Feb. 14 quake caused widespread power outages and left dozens injured. Seismologists believe it was an aftershock of the 2011 megaquake.
For some, the quake on Saturday evening brought back memories of the destruction in 2011.
"I recalled that day 10 years ago," a man in Ishinomaki city told NHK as he fled to a park on a hill. "Because of our experience of that day, I moved quickly. My heart is pounding hard," he said.
"It was really bad, long shaking from side-to-side. It was even longer than the quake last month, but at least the building here is all right," Shizue Onodera told the broadcaster from the shop where she works in Ishinomaki.
"Lots of bottles smashed on the floor," she said. "The electricity is on."
Others compared it to the strong quake felt just last month.
"Suddenly, the large tremor continued for about 20 seconds," the broadcaster quoted a disaster official in Iwanuma, Miyagi Prefecture, as saying. "The shaking caused things on a desk to move, but they didn't fall, and I felt the shaking was smaller than last month's earthquake."
Japan sits on the Pacific "Ring of Fire," an arc of intense seismic activity that stretches through Southeast Asia and across the Pacific basin.
Rowan Cocoan This is a video from the February 27, 2010 8.8 quake in Chile. The location was the casino which is located in the basement level of the covered shopping mall about 4 km away from my apartment on the hill. Imagine the shaking if you were in a high-rise. The movement you see was estimated to be an 8.3 for our area and we were in the northeast corner of the maximum shake zone according to the experts.
Rowan Cocoan Don't go overboard, it'd be like a tsunami.
3-11 EQ and tsunami stands out well above the average tectonic movement I've monitored over the last 10 years. Increased volcanic activity. Grand Solar Minimum. What if it gets worse, all of a sudden.
Rowan Cocoan Only disagreeing with you* due to my reading list lately. Bunch of catastrophist stuff.
But if even a fraction of it is accurate then "humanity as a whole" is but a cowardly reflection of its former self.
Nothing quite as scary as an earthquake.
Except, perhaps, an "earthquake" that changes the altitude of the "building you are in" by (plus or minus) two to three miles.
Or, perhaps, watching as a huge planet grows larger and larger, knowing from past encounters that at a certain point the entire earth will shake and everything built "by the hand of man" will be destroyed.
By "ancestral standards" our worst earthquake is a "nervous tic" compared to a grand-mal seizure.
It may just be a strange time to be reading catastrophist material. It puts a very bad light on the whole "hiding from a tiny virus that isn't very deadly" phenomenon.
We've apparently been through "almost everything & almost everyone died" a few times. I shudder to think what some of our "barely made it through the last cataclysm" ancestors would say if they could see us now.
* (I was "triggered" by some "micro-intelligence" in your post ;> Thanks for providing a launchpad for my rant.)
WEBCAM March 2021 (caferadlab.com)
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