Tsunami warning lifted for strong Japan earthquake

Dec 7, 6:44 AM EST -

TOKYO (AP) — A strong earth­quake Fri­day struck the same Japan­ese coast dev­as­tated by last year’s mas­sive quake and tsunami, gen­er­at­ing small waves but no imme­di­ate reports of heavy dam­age. Sev­eral peo­ple along the north­east­ern coast were report­edly injured and build­ings in Tokyo and else­where swayed for sev­eral minutes.

The earth­quake had a pre­lim­i­nary mag­ni­tude of 7.3 and struck in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Miyagi pre­fec­ture at 5:18 p.m. (0818 GMT), the Japan Mete­o­ro­log­i­cal Agency said. The epi­cen­ter was 10 kilo­me­ters (6.2 miles) beneath the seabed and 240 kilo­me­ters (150 miles) offshore.

The area was shaken by repeated, smaller after­shocks, the agency said.

After the quake, author­i­ties issued a warn­ing that a tsunami poten­tially as high as 2 meters (2.2 yards) could hit. Sirens whooped along the coast as peo­ple ran for higher ground.

Ishi­no­maki, a city in Miyagi, reported a tsunami 1 meter (1 yard) high and other towns reported smaller tsunamis.

About two hours after the quake struck, the tsunami warn­ing was can­celled. The Pacific Tsunami Warn­ing Cen­ter ear­lier said there was no risk of a wide­spread tsunami.

Aiko Hibiya, a vol­un­teer for the recov­ery in Minami-Sanriku, a coastal town dev­as­tated by last year’s tsunami, said she was at a friend’s tem­po­rary hous­ing when the quake struck.

“It shook for such a long time,” she said.

She said other vol­un­teers who had been in coastal areas were evac­u­ated to a square and a park­ing lot as they waited for the tsunami warn­ing to be lifted.

Japan has barely begun to rebuild from last year’s magnitude-9.0 earth­quake, which trig­gered a tsunami that swelled to 20 meters high in some areas, rav­aging dozens of coastal com­mu­ni­ties in Miyagi and else­where. About 19,000 peo­ple were killed and some 325,000 peo­ple remain dis­placed from their homes, liv­ing in bar­racks and other tem­po­rary quarters.

Miyagi pre­fec­tural police said there were no imme­di­ate reports of dam­age from Friday’s quake and tsunami, although traf­fic was being stopped in some places to check on roads.

Pub­lic tele­vi­sion broad­caster NHK reported that five peo­ple were injured, includ­ing a 75-year-old woman in Miyagi who fell while flee­ing the tsunami. Police said they could not imme­di­ately con­firm those reports.

Shortly before the earth­quake struck, NHK broke off reg­u­lar pro­gram­ming to warn that a strong quake was due to hit. After­ward, the announcer repeat­edly urged all near the coast to flee to higher ground.

The Mete­o­ro­log­i­cal Agency has an early warn­ing sys­tem that, using data from seis­mo­graphs scat­tered across Japan, enables it to pro­vide advance warn­ing of the esti­mated inten­sity and tim­ing of a major quake. The warn­ing for Friday’s quake was issued six min­utes before it struck, accord­ing to an unnamed offi­cial from the Mete­o­ro­log­i­cal Agency who spoke on national tele­vi­sion more than an hour after the quake.

The magnitude-9.0 earth­quake and ensu­ing tsunami that slammed into north­east­ern Japan on March 11, 2011, killed or left miss­ing some 19,000 peo­ple, dev­as­tat­ing much of the coast. checks after the

Last year’s earth­quake and tsunami also caused melt­downs at the Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant in the worst nuclear dis­as­ter since the Cher­nobyl in 1986.

Imme­di­ately fol­low­ing Friday’s quake, there were no prob­lems at any of the nuclear plants oper­ated by Fukushima Dai-Ichi oper­a­tor Tokyo Elec­tric Power Co., said a TEPCO spokesman, Takeo Iwamoto. Only two of Japan’s 50 nuclear plants are cur­rently oper­at­ing; the rest have been shut down for main­te­nance and safety checks while the coun­try re-examines the future of nuclear power there.

All Nip­pon Air­ways spokesman Takuya Taniguchi said gov­ern­ment offi­cials were check­ing on the run­ways at Sendai air­port. The two jets that were in the air went to other air­ports and all seven flights sched­uled to go to Sendai for the day were can­celled, he said.

Posted by Randa Wagner on Dec 7 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.