Japan lifts tsunami warnings after 7.5-magnitude earthquake
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TOKYO - The Japanese authorities lifted tsunami warnings on Dec 9, hours after a powerful 7.5-magnitude earthquake
The earthquake struck off the coast at 11.15pm on Dec 8, and the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) said a tsunami as high as 3m could hit the country's north-eastern coast. Warnings were issued for the prefectures of Hokkaido, Aomori and Iwate, and tsunamis from 20cm to 70cm high were observed at several ports, JMA said.
By the early hours of Dec 9, the JMA had downgraded the warnings to advisories, and later lifted all advisories. There were no reports of major damage.
The epicentre of the quake was 80km off the coast of Aomori prefecture, at a depth of 54km.
On Japan's 1 to 7 scale of seismic intensity, the tremor registered as an “upper 6” in Hachinohe city, Aomori prefecture – a quake strong enough to make it impossible to keep standing or move without crawling.
“As of now, I have received reports of 30 people being injured and one fire,” Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi told reporters.
East Japan Railway suspended some services in the area, which was also hit by a massive 9-magnitude quake in March 2011. Other train services are facing delays in northern Japan, the operator said.
Following the tremor, the JMA issued an advisory for a wide region from the northernmost island of Hokkaido down to Chiba prefecture, east of Tokyo, calling on residents to be on alert for the possibility of a powerful earthquake hitting again within a week.
"There is a possibility that further powerful and stronger earthquakes could occur over the next several days," a JMA official said at a briefing.
No irregularities were reported at nuclear power plants run by Tohoku Electric Power and Hokkaido Electric Power in the region, the utilities said. Thousands of households had lost power immediately following the quake, but service resumed by the morning of Dec 9.
A tsunami warning flashes over live footage of a waterfront area, on a TV screen in Sapporo, in Japan’s northern Hokkaido prefecture on Dec 9.
PHOTO: AFP
Yen weakens briefly
The yen weakened against major currencies after news of the tremor, with the dollar and euro both touching session highs.
Japan is one of the world's most earthquake-prone countries, with a tremor occurring at least every five minutes. Located in the "Ring of Fire" of volcanoes and oceanic trenches partly encircling the Pacific Basin, Japan accounts for about 20 per cent of the world's earthquakes of magnitude 6.0 or greater.
Bookshelves and documents that fell during an earthquake are seen at Kyodo News' Hakodate bureau.
PHOTO: REUTERS
The north-eastern region suffered one of the country's deadliest earthquakes on March 11, 2011, when a 9-magnitude tremor struck under the ocean off the coast of the northern city of Sendai. It was the most powerful ever recorded in Japan and set off a series of massive tsunami that devastated a wide swathe of the Pacific coastline and killed nearly 20,000 people.
Drawing on lessons from that disaster, when a 7-magnitude earthquake had struck two days earlier, the government now issues a one-week "megaquake" advisory whenever a significant earthquake occurs in the region.
The 2011 tsunami also damaged the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, leading to a series of explosions and meltdowns in the world's worst nuclear disaster for 25 years. REUTERS
