Earthquake Hits Western Japan

 

An earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 6.3 struck off southwestern Japan on Wednesday night, the US Geological Survey said, but there were no tsunami warnings or reports of damage. A magnitude 6.6 earthquake, measuring a lower 6 on Japan's seismic intensity scale, struck off the west coast of Shikoku island on Wednesday night striking at a depth of 39 kilometres, its epicentre was in the Bungo Channel, a strait separating the islands of Kyushu and Shikoku.

It left nine people with light injuries in Ehime, Kochi and Oita prefectures, authorities said Thursday morning. Minor damage in some areas, including broken water pipes, fallen streetlights and a landslide on a national roadway, has been reported, but no fires were reported in the quake's aftermath. No abnormalities have been detected at Shikoku Electric Power's Ikata nuclear power plant in Ehime Prefecture, according to the Nuclear Regulation Authority.

The Meteorological Agency initially reported the quake as magnitude 6.4 but later revised the figure to 6.6. Satoshi Harada, head of the agency's earthquake and tsunami monitoring division, said that this quake doesn’t meet the criteria for further study in that context, the agency will issue updates and convene expert panels as needed. The agency has advised residents of areas hit by the quake to be careful of seismic activity and heavy rainfall for the next week or so, as the risk of house collapses and landslides has increased in areas.

The quake has prompted anxieties regarding the possibility of an upcoming Nankai Trough earthquake, which typically occurs every 100-150 years, with the last one occurring 70 years ago. "This earthquake was caused by a fault shift within the plate, which is deeper than the boundary between the plates," Harada explained at the conference. Relatively large earthquakes have occurred in the past in the vicinity of the Bungo Channel, including an earthquake with a maximum intensity of upper 5 in Oita Prefecture in July 2015.