Four people were killed and more than 100 others injured when a strong 7.4-magnitude earthquake rocked eastern Japan on Wednesday night, prompting a tsunami warning on the country’s northeast coast.
The quake derailed a train, causing no casualties, opened cracks in highways and toppled displays in stores.
But the damage seemed relatively minor compared to the power of the quake which mainly affected Fukushima and Miyagi prefectures in northeastern Japan.
Thursday morning, Hirokazu Matsuno, government spokesman, reported four dead and 107 injured.
According to the Japanese Meteorological Agency (JMA), the hypocenter of the earthquake that occurred on Wednesday at 11:36 p.m. (2:36 p.m. GMT), re-evaluated at 7.4 (against 7.3 initially), was 60 km deep under the Pacific Ocean. off Fukushima Prefecture, where a nuclear power plant was devastated by a tsunami in 2011.
The JMA immediately issued a warning for waves of one meter in height. Waves of 30 cm were finally measured in Ishinomaki (Miyagi department), according to the agency, which had called on residents to move away from the seafront. The tsunami warning was lifted Thursday morning.
“The police and the emergency services have received numerous calls in Fukushima and Miyagi,” Mr. Matsuno said overnight, inviting the population to remain vigilant in anticipation of new tremors.
Small aftershocks were recorded throughout the night. Evacuation instructions to refuges have been issued in certain localities.
“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.
A rescue worker from the city of Ishinomaki told AFP that he was awakened by “an extremely violent jolt”.
“I heard the ground rumble. Rather than feeling fear, the memory of the (2011) earthquake came back to me,” he added.
No anomaly was detected at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, severely damaged in 2011 by the gigantic tsunami caused by a magnitude 9 earthquake, according to the Japanese Nuclear Safety Agency (NRA).
In the other nuclear power plant in the county, Fukushima Daini, also shut down since 2011, as well as in the Onagawa power plant (Miyagi county), pumps for spent fuel cooling pools briefly stopped working, but they were quickly restored to working order, the NRA later said.
Derailment of a shinkansen
The earthquake, felt strongly including in Tokyo, initially deprived more than two million homes of electricity in Tokyo and its neighboring departments, according to the operator Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco), but power was fully restored a few hours later.
Some 4,000 homes were however still without electricity in the northeast Thursday noon, according to the company Tohoku Electric Power.
The JR East railway company reported major disruptions to its network. A shinkansen, the Japanese high-speed train, notably derailed north of the city of Fukushima with 78 people on board, without causing any injuries.
And in the city of Sendai (northeast), a section of wall collapsed on the site of the historic castle of Aoba.
Japan, still haunted by March 11, 2011, observed a minute of silence 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 power plant, where the cores of three reactors had molten.
Local authorities still count 33,365 displaced people today, 80% of whom live outside the department of Fukushima.
“It’s really ironic,” said Yoshinari Kiwaki, 62, a supermarket worker in the city of Shiroishi, on Thursday. “Exactly a year ago, we had a similar earthquake which was actually a replica of the 2011 disaster.”
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.