A powerful 7.3-magnitude quake jolted eastern Japan on Wednesday night, rattling the capital Tokyo and prompting a tsunami advisory for parts of the northeast coast.
The quake, which cut power to more than two million households, was centred off the coast of the Fukushima region at a depth of 60 kilometres (37 miles), the Japan Meteorological Agency said.
“Calls have been inundating police and ambulances in Fukushima and (neighbouring region) Miyagi,” top government spokesman Hirokazu Matsuno told reporters. “We’re doing our best to assess the extent of the damage.” Japan’s nuclear authority said no abnormalities were detected at the stricken Fukushima plant that went into meltdown in 2011 when a huge 9.0-magnitude quake hit off the eastern coast, triggering a deadly tsunami and nuclear disaster.
Shortly after Wednesday’s quake hit at 11:36 pm (1436 GMT) an advisory for tsunami waves of up to one metre was issued for the coasts of Fukushima and Miyagi. A 20 centimetre tsunami wave was recorded in the city of Ishinomaki in Miyagi, according to public broadcaster NHK.
TV footage showed some structural damage in the northeast, including the collapse of a stone wall of Aoba castle in Sendai city. An official in the emergency department of the local government of Ishinomaki told AFP he had been woken by “extremely violent shaking”. “I heard the ground rumbling. Rather than feeling scared, I immediately remembered the Great East Japan Earthquake,” he said, referring to the 2011 disaster. A Shinkansen bullet train was derailed north of Fukushima city, train company JR East said, but there were no immediate reports of injuries.
Matsuno said an emergency government taskforce had been set up and warned residents of possible strong aftershocks over the next week. “Major aftershocks often happen a couple of days after the first quake, so please stay away from any collapsed buildings… and other high-risk places,” he said. Multiple smaller jolts hit the region in the hours immediately after the quake. Around two million households were left without power in the central Kanto region, including 700,000 in Tokyo, electricity provider TEPCO said, but power was being gradually restored in the capital and elsewhere.
