Global Courant 2023-05-05 16:41:51
A powerful earthquake struck central Japan on Friday, leaving at least one person dead and 21 injured.
The 6.5-magnitude earthquake struck the central Ishikawa region at noon, at a depth of 12 kilometers, according to the Japan Meteorological Agency.
Weather officials warned residents of possible additional tremors and landslides in the coming days, but said there was no tsunami threat.
“It was a big, long tremor that lasted about two minutes. I felt scared because the shaking went on and on,” a local government official in the city of Suzu, who declined to give her name, told the public broadcaster.
Government spokesman Hirokazu Matsuno told reporters in the capital Tokyo that one person was reported dead and that there were “numerous reports of collapsed buildings”.
“The victim fell down a flight of stairs,” a crisis management official told AFP, adding that 21 other people were injured.
The local fire and disaster management agency said at least three buildings had been destroyed with two people trapped inside.
One had been pulled from the wreckage and taken to hospital and rescue teams were searching for the other.
The US Geological Survey put the magnitude at 6.2 and said the quake struck off the coast, but the Japan Meteorological Agency said the quake’s epicenter was on land.
Japan’s disaster prevention minister Koichi Tani said there were reports of multiple landslides and some locals had taken refuge in evacuation shelters.
Earthquakes are common in Japan, which sits on the Pacific “Ring of Fire,” an arc of intense seismic activity that stretches across Southeast Asia and the entire Pacific basin.
Japan was hit by a massive 9.0-magnitude undersea earthquake to its northeast in March 2011, which triggered a tsunami that left an estimated 18,500 people dead or missing.
The 2011 tsunami also melted down three reactors at Japan’s Fukushima nuclear power plant, causing the country’s worst post-war disaster and the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl.
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