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02-01-2024
TOKYO: Eight people have been killed in a powerful earthquake in Japan which caused homes to collapse and triggered tsunami warnings.
Thousands of people living in coastal areas have spent the night in evacuation centres after being told to head to higher ground.
There are no longer any tsunami warnings in place, with all downgraded to “advisories.”
The Japanese military has been handing out supplies including food, water and blankets for those who have had to leave home.
President Joe Biden says the US stands ready to provide any necessary assistance.
Japan’s meteorological agency has lifted all tsunami advisories along the Sea of Japan following Monday’s 7.6 magnitude earthquake, public broadcaster NHK reports.
Earlier, all tsunami warnings had been downgraded to “advisories”.
The death toll from Monday’s earthquake has now reached eight, according to public broadcaster NHK.
Some images from Monday show people crouching to absorb the impact of the quake.
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida says he wants to assure people affected by the earthquake that help is on its way.
“The Self-Defense Forces will face many difficulties reaching the disaster-hit areas because roads have been cut off but people trapped in buildings should be rescued as soon as possible before the buildings collapse,” he says.
“I have ordered Self-Defense Force officials to do everything they can to get to the disaster-hit areas.”
Japan is very used to earthquakes on this scale, Dan Faulkner, a professor of geology and earth sciences at the University of Liverpool, tells media.
“In this part of the world we kind of expect events of this kind of size and, in fact 60 years ago, about 200km (124 miles) to the north-east of where this event happened, there was a similar-sized earthquake back then too. So, it’s certainly not unknown to have earthquakes of this size in that particular area.”
He says Japan is so liable to earthquakes because it is part of the Pacific Rim of fire “where there’s lots of huge fault zones and subduction zones where tectonic plates are being thrust back down into the Earth’s mantle all the way around the Pacific”.
“And whilst this earthquake didn’t happen on one of those subduction zone faults, it’s all part of that same system where the tectonic plates are pushing against each other and this earthquake was a thrust fault earthquake where, basically, the Earth’s crust will have been pushed up by about 3.5 metres [11ft 6in] in this event.”
Faulkner says while the worst may be over, people can expect more tremors to come. (Int’l News Desk)
