Tokyo, 22 January, /AJMEDIA/
An earthquake with a magnitude of 6.6 rattled southwestern and western Japan early Saturday, resulting in at least nine injuries amid strong shaking but no tsunami waves were triggered, the weather agency and local authorities said.
The focus of the quake under the Pacific Ocean was within a zone off Japan’s coast where it is predicted that a massive earthquake and ensuing tsunami could occur in the future. The Japan Meteorological Agency said it will study whether the latest quake is connected in any way with the one predicted.
The quake occurred at around 1:08 a.m., logging upper 5 on the Japanese seismic intensity scale of 7 in Miyazaki and Oita prefectures on the country’s southwestern main island of Kyushu, the weather agency said.
At an intensity of upper 5, many people find it hard to move and walking is difficult without holding on to something stable.
The agency revised the magnitude of the quake upward to 6.6 from an initial estimate of 6.4. It also warned of the possibility of another quake causing a similar level of shaking in the hard-hit areas within the next week.
After the strong quake, several smaller-scale temblors occurred sporadically in the area.
In Oita, five people were injured, most of them slightly, according to local governments. In Miyazaki, police confirmed four injuries.
A temporary power outage occurred in Oita after the temblor. Water pipe ruptures were reported at several sites in the city of Oita.
There were no abnormalities in the operation of nuclear power plants in the Kyushu region, Kyushu Electric Power Co. said.
Following the quake, the government set up a liaison office at the prime minister’s office to gather information and assess the damage.
The quake was also felt across a wide area of western Japan as well as part of central Japan.
The Japanese government estimates that up to 320,000 people could die in the event of a tsunami triggered by a massive trench-type earthquake along the Nankai Trough stretching from off western to central Japan.
In the Nankai Trough, magnitude-8 class quakes have occurred at certain intervals over centuries, with the government’s Earthquake Research Committee saying there is a 90 percent chance that a quake with a magnitude of 8.0 to 9.0 will occur there within the next 40 years.
