Strongest earthquake since 2011 strikes Kumamoto
area
AP, KYODO, JIJI
APR 15, 2016
ARTICLE HISTORY
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At least two
people were killed and 45 injured by a magnitude-6.5 earthquake
that knocked down houses and buckled roads in Kyushu on Thursday
night. The temblor logged a 7, the highest level on the Japanese
intensity scale.
Both victims
are from the hardest-hit town of Mashiki, Kumamoto Prefecture,
about 15 km (9 miles) east of the city of Kumamoto, said Kumamoto
prefecture disaster management official Takayuki Matsushita.
Earlier,
Japanese Red Cross Kumamoto Hospital said it had admitted or
treated 45 people, including five with serious injuries.
The quake
struck at 9:26 p.m. at a depth of 11 km (7 miles) near the city of
Kumamoto, the Meteorological Agency said. There was no tsunami
risk.
“The shaking
was so violent I couldn’t stand still,” said Hironobu Kosaki, a
Kumamoto Prefectural Police night-duty official.
Chief Cabinet
Secretary Yoshihide Suga said at least 19 houses collapsed, and
hundreds of calls came in reporting building damage and people
buried under debris or trapped inside.
“Because of
the night darkness, the extent of damage is still unclear,” he
said.
The damage and
calls for help are concentrated in the town of Mashiki, about 1,300
km (800 miles) southwest of Tokyo, the Fire and Disaster Management
Agency said
One of the
victims in Mashiki died after being pulled from some rubble, and
the other was killed in a fire, Matsushita said. A third person
rescued from under a collapsed building is in a state of heart and
lung failure.
Matsushita
said rescue operations were repeatedly disrupted by
aftershocks.
“There was a
ka-boom and the whole house shook violently sideways,” Takahiko
Morita, a Mashiki resident, said in a telephone interview with NHK.
“Furniture and bookshelves fell down, and books were all over the
floor.”
Morita said
some houses and walls collapsed in his neighborhood, and water
supply had been cut off.
Dozens of
people evacuated their homes and gathered outside Mashiki town
hall, sitting on tarps well after midnight. Some wrapped blankets
around their shoulders against the springtime chill.
Prime Minister
Shinzo Abe told reporters that the government has mobilized police,
firefighters and Self-Defense Forces troops for the rescue
operation.
“We’ll carry
out relief operation through the night,” he said.
Suga said
there no abnormalities at nearby nuclear facilities. The epicenter
was 120 km (74 miles) northeast of Kyushu Electric Power Co.’s
Sendai nuclear plant in Kagoshima Prefecture, the only one
operating in the country.
Most of
Japan’s nuclear reactors remain offline following the meltdowns at
the Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s Fukushima No. 1 plant in 2011 after
a magnitude-9.0 earthquake triggered huge tsunami that knocked out
the plant’s reactor cooling equipment.
Television
footage showed fires breaking out in some places, with firefighters
battling an orange blaze.
Keisukei
Urata, an official in the nearby city of Uki who was driving home
when the quake struck, told NHK that parts of the ceiling at Uki
City Hall collapsed, windows broke and cabinets fell to the
ground.
Kasumi
Nakamura, an official in the village of Nishihara, said that the
rattling started modestly and grew violent, lasting about 30
seconds.
“Papers,
files, flower vases and everything fell on the floor,” he told
NHK.
There were
multiple aftershocks, the largest one with a preliminary magnitude
of 6.4 shortly after midnight, according to the Meteorological
Agency.
The U.S.
Geological Survey measured the initial quake’s preliminary
magnitude at 6.2. It upgraded its damage assessment to red, meaning
extensive damage is probable and the disaster likely
widespread.
Footage from
an NHK bureau in the area showed books, files and papers raining
down to the floor. One employee appeared to have fallen off a
chair, while others slid under their desks to protect their
heads.
The powerful
earthquakes preliminary magnitude was 6.4 struck.
The quake,
which logged the highest 7 on the Japanese earthquake intensity
scale, jolted Kumamoto at around 9:26 p.m.
The extent of
damage was not immediately clear, but reports of damaged buildings
and injuries were slowly coming in.
In Mashiki,
local authorities reported the deaths of two people.
More than 20
homes have collapsed and several people were trapped under debris.
At least seven fires have been reported in the town.
Approximately
1,800 people in Mashiki have left their homes and are spending the
night in evacuation zones.
More than 280
people were being treated for injuries at three hospitals in the
city of Kumamoto, hospital officials said.
Places around
Kumamoto also recorded strong jolts ranging between 3 and lower 5
on the Japanese scale.
A series of
similarly shallow and frequent aftershocks followed, including one
of a preliminary magnitude 6.4 — and upper 6 on the Japanese
seismic scale — that hit the area shortly after midnight. Another
measuring magnitude 5.7 occurred shortly after 10 p.m.
The weather
agency earlier said the earthquake is believed to have struck at a
depth of 10 km.
JR Kyushu
suspended all operations on the Kyushu Shinkansen Line following
the quake. On the Sanyo Shinkansen Line connecting the Honshu
mainland and Kyushu, power was lost between Hakata and Kokura
stations but operations later resumed at around 9:40 p.m.
Following the
quake, Kyushu Electric Power Co. said it found no abnormalities in
its Sendai nuclear plant in Kagoshima Prefecture. The operator said
it is further looking into any possible damage.
Shikoku
Electric Power Co. said its Ikata nuclear plant, which is currently
idled, sustained no damage from the Kumamoto quake.
In Tokyo,
Prime Minister Abe immediately set up an emergency headquarters and
instructed relevant authorities to gather information.
At a hastily
arranged news conference, Chief Cabinet Secretary Suga said the
government was doing its utmost to get a full picture of the
situation, adding that its priority was the rescue operations.
Defense
Minister Gen Nakatani said at a press conference that Self-Defense
Forces airplanes and helicopters have been dispatched to the
quake-hit area to ascertain the extent of damage. Currently more
than 350 military personnel have been dispatched for rescue
work.
According to
the weather agency, the Kumamoto quake is the first intensity-7
quake since the Great East Japan Earthquake that wreaked havoc in
the Tohoku region in March 2011.
The
Meteorological Agency warned of aftershocks.
“Generally
speaking, an inland earthquake with the focus relatively near the
surface tends to be followed by many aftershocks,” Gen Aoki,
director of the agency’s earthquake and tsunami monitoring
division, said at a press conference in Tokyo.
This was the
first quake to measure 7 on the Japanese seismic intensity scale of
7 in Kyushu. Strong aftershocks including a jolt of upper 6 have
already happened.
The intensity
7 was felt in the town of Mashiki. Near the town, there are the
Futagawa and Hinagu faults.
The
government’s task force to promote earthquake research expects a
7.0-magnitude quake to occur at the Futagawa fault over the next 30
years with probabilities of up to 0.9 percent and a 7.5-magnitude
quake at the Hinagu rift with a maximum probability 6 percent.
The agency’s
Aoki said that whether the day’s temblor has a connection with the
faults is unclear.
But Keiichi
Tadokoro, associate professor at Nagoya University’s Earthquake and
Volcano Research Center, strongly suspects such a link.
“The largest
intensity figure was recorded only in Mashiki, possibly because the
ground there is easily shaken,” he pointed out. “Chances cannot be
ruled out that an aftershock of intensity 5 upper could hit the
area.”
The Futagawa
fault stretches more than 64 km from the village of Minamiaso to
the tip of the Uto Peninsula via Mashiki, while the Hinagu fault
runs some 81 km from near Mashiki to the south of the Yatsushiro
Sea, according to the task force.