Earthquake Today News: 2 Quakes Jolt Japan, Reviving Memories of Devastating 2011 Nuclear Disaster, Tsunami
Two strong earthquakes jolted northern Japan on Tuesday, with the first one placed at 6.9 magnitude causing a small tsunami that did not cause any damages but nevertheless triggered evacuation warnings in towns along the coast.
Hours later another quake with a preliminary magnitude of 5.7 jolted the same region, Reuters reported.
Japan's public broadcaster NHK showed live video footage showing strong shaking of the ground in Aomori prefecture, some 700 km north of Tokyo.
The quake was measured at a depth of about 50 km on the northeastern coast.
Tuesday's twin quakes brought painful memories of the devastating earthquake and tsunami that struck towns along the northeastern coast of Japan on March 11, 2011. That disaster led to three nuclear meltdowns in the Fukushima Daiichi plant, 220 km northeast of Tokyo, triggering the evacuation of more than 160,000 residents and contaminating the water, food and air in the region.
That disaster, also known as the Great East Japan earthquake, was recorded at magnitude 9 and struck at 2:46 p.m., killing about 16,000 people and triggering tsunamis that wiped out towns.
Following Tuesday's quakes, Tohoku Electric Power Co., which operates two nuclear plants in the region, assured the public that its facilities were not affected by the temblors.
Earthquakes are common in Japan which sits on the Pacific Ring of Fire and where about 20 percent of the world's earthquakes of magnitude 6 or greater occur.
The U.S. Geological Service said the first earthquake occurred at about 8:06 a.m. off Iwate Prefecture in Japan with a depth of 23 km.
The Japan Meteorological Agency placed the magnitude at 6.9 with a depth of 10 km. It issued a tsunami warning, which it later lifted. "We believe that this earthquake was an aftershock from the March 11, 2011 earthquake," said Yasuhiro Yoshida, an agency official.
NHK said the agency recorded a 10-cm tsunami in ports in Miyako and 20-cm tsunami in Kuji.
At around 1:46 p.m. Tuesday, the agency recorded another earthquake with a magnitude of 5.7 and depth of 50 km in Iwate Prefecture but said the earthquake did not pose any tsunami risk.
."At greater depths, Japanese arc earthquakes occur within the subducting Pacific and Philippine Sea plates and can reach depths of nearly 700 km," according to the U.S. Geological Service.
It said since 1900, three major earthquakes occurred off Japan and three north of Hokkaido. These are the M8.4 1933 Sanriku-oki earthquake, the M8.3 2003 Tokachi-oki earthquake, the M9.0 2011 Tohoku earthquake, the M8.4 1958 Etorofu earthquake, the M8.5 1963 Kuril earthquake, and the M8.3 1994 Shikotan earthquake.