Yaizu, August 11: A strong earthquake rocked central Japan on Tuesday, injuring more than 100 people, triggering a landslide and shutting down a nuclear power plant and bullet trains, officials said.
The magnitude 6.4 tremor shook buildings, threw objects from shelves and jolted people from their sleep in and around Tokyo, the world’s largest urban area, at 0137 IST.
The quake hit in Suruga Bay on the Pacific Ocean coast, about 170 kilometres southwest of Tokyo, at a depth of 27 kilometres, according to the US Geological Survey.
At least 101 people were injured, mostly by falling objects such as television sets, in the worst-hit prefecture of Shizuoka, including three who were in serious condition, officials said.
Seven more people were injured in Tokyo and in Kanagawa and Aichi prefectures, said the National Police Agency.
“It was a huge tremble, like nothing I had experienced before,” said Tadao Negami, a 69-year-old resident of Mishima city in Shizuoka.
The Hamaoka nuclear plant in the prefecture automatically shut down two reactors when the quake hit, operator Chubu Electric Power Co. said.
A company official said no radiation had leaked from the plant. The utility said the quake caused power failures in some 9,500 households.
Central Japan Railway Co. suspended Shinkansen bullet trains in the quake-hit region but resumed the services several hours later.
A large landslide triggered by the quake damaged the Tomei Expressway at Makinohara, Shizuoka, causing long traffic jams.
In Shizuoka city, parts of the stone wall around the 424-year-old Sunpu castle collapsed, said castle park official Yasushi Watanabe.
Prime Minister Taro Aso’s office set up an emergency centre shortly after the quake, which was followed by 13 noticeable aftershocks.
Japan’s Meteorological Agency, which measured the quake at a revised 6.5, said there was no risk of a tsunami after detecting initial waves about 40 centimetres high at Omaezaki, Shizuoka.
“The quake was so scary, and the tsunami warning too,” said Masaki Yamada, 44, a fisheries cooperative official in the port of Yaizu, where a new 300-metre long crack ran along the quay.
“Today’s event is a rehearsal for us in preparing for a bigger, real disaster,” he said.
Tokyo has long braced itself for a great quake, often referred to as “the big one” — over a magnitude of 8.0 — while catastrophic quakes are also expected to strike some time in the future in the Tokai and Nankai regions.
—-Agencies