A series of powerful
earthquakes shook the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido early on
Friday, killing one, injuring more than?479 people, causing
widespread damage and blackouts and prompting officials to issue
tidal wave warnings.
Japan's Meteorological
Agency measured the initial quake at 8.0 on the Richter scale --
powerful enough to cause significant damage -- and warned residents
of aftershocks.
Some quake-generated waves
measuring about one meter (three feet) in height struck the eastern
Hokkaido coast, washing away some empty cars, but no major wave
damage was reported.
The focus of the first
quake was 26 miles below the seabed in the Pacific Ocean near the
port of Erimo, about 600 miles north of Tokyo.
A second quake measuring
5.8 on the Richter scale jolted Hokkaido about an hour later
followed by another measuring 7.0.
The first quake struck
at 4.50 a.m. local time as most of the population were
sleeping.
NHK television said at
least 479 people had been injured in the relatively lightly
populated region.
Hiroaki Tanaka, a fire
official in Kushiro on Hokkaido's east coast, said?that 47
people were being treated for injuries at hospitals in the
city.
"The situation seems to
be settling down. Aftershocks seem to be lessening. Injuries could
rise though, if people head to hospitals in their own cars," he
said by telephone. "We felt it shake for a very long time," he said
of the quake.
Television pictures
showed boats heading out to sea after the warning of a tsunami --
large waves caused by seismic activity.
"We want everyone to
exercise care for a while," a meteorological agency official told a
news conference, referring to the tsunami warning.
Minoru Kasahara,
seismologist at Hokkaido University, said on television: "We should
be alert for tsunami for a day or two."
Television pictures showed
video of a fire and smoke billowing near an Idemitsu Kosan Co oil
storage facility at a refinery in Tomakomai, a coastal city in
southern Hokkaido.
The unlisted refiner
later said it had closed the plant for safety reasons.
Other footage showed
cracks in buildings and fallen tiles as well as items spilled from
supermarket shelves.
Jiji news agency said
the airport in the city of Kushiro had been closed after the
ceiling of the control tower collapsed.
Highways were closed and
rail services halted in many areas. A passenger train derailed,
injuring one person, reports said.
Tsunami
warning
The meteorological agency
issued a tsunami warning for the coastal areas in eastern and
central Hokkaido and a tsunami alert for the coastal areas in
western Hokkaido as well as the northern Japanese prefectures of
Aomori, Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima.
The "warning" was later
downgraded to an "alert."
In 1993, a tsunami
caused by a quake measuring 7.8 killed about 200 people on the
island of Okushiri, off western Hokkaido.
The US National Oceanic
and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) issued a tsunami warning for
Russia as well as Japan. It also issued a lower-level tsunami watch
for the Philippines, Taiwan, Guam, and a number of islands in the
Pacific Ocean.
Hideki Watanabe, an
official in the town of Erimo, said the quakes caused a power
outage to an unspecified number of homes.
Shugeyuki Takagi, an
official in the town of Urakawa near Erimo, said at least 11 people
were injured there, all slightly.
The Hokkaido Electric
Power Co said the quake triggered an automatic shutdown of its
Tomato-Atsuma thermal power station in Atsuma and caused a blackout
in nearby communities.
Operation of Hokkaido
Electric's Tomari nuclear power station was not affected, NHK
said.
Hokkaido, about the size
of Austria, is the second largest of Japan's four main islands and
has a population of more than five million. The capital, Sapporo,
hosted the 1972 Winter Olympics.
Ring of
fire
Memories are still vivid in
Japan of the earthquake in the western city of Kobe that killed
more than 6,400 people eight years ago. That quake measured 7.2 on
the Richter scale.
The Great Kanto
earthquake of September 1, 1923 measured 7.9 on the Richter scale
and killed more than 140,000 people in Tokyo and the neighboring
port city of Yokohama.
Volcanic arcs and
oceanic trenches partly encircling the Pacific Basin form the
so-called Ring of Fire, a zone of frequent earthquakes and volcanic
eruptions and the location of the top 10 earthquakes in the world
since 1900.
All of the top 10
measured an 8.5 magnitude or above.
The largest recorded
earthquake in the world was a magnitude 9.5 in Chile on May 22,
1960.
The US Geological Survey
rates earthquakes of 8.0 magnitude and higher as "great" and says
there is an average of one per year in the world.
Until the Japan quake,
none of 8.0 or higher had been recorded in 2003. There was none of
that magnitude in 2002.
(China Daily September
26, 2003)
