Powerful quake rocks Japan

A powerful, deadly earthquake struck Japan early today, killing a 52-year-old woman and injuring 80 others as it shook buildings and triggered a small tsunami that hit the coast.

The magnitude-7.1 quake struck at 9.42am local time (1.42am Irish time) off the north coast of Ishikawa prefecture (state), Japan’s Meteorological Agency said. The agency issued a tsunami warning urging people near the sea to move to higher land.

A small tsunami measuring six inches hit shore at around 10.18am, the agency said. The warning was lifted about an hour later.

At least one person was killed and 80 others hurt along the country’s Sea of Japan coast reports said.

In Ishikawa, at least 24 people were injured, six severely, according to prefectural official Kosaku Ueno. In neighbouring Toyama, at least two people were injured.

Television footage from the quake zone showed buildings shaking violently for about 30 seconds. Other shots showed collapsed buildings and shops with shattered windows, streets cluttered with roof tiles and roads with their pavement cracked.

Many of the injured people suffered burns or were hurt by falling objects and broken glass, news reports said.

Public broadcaster NHK said the dead woman was crushed by a falling stone lantern.

The government said it was sending police and defence forces to the quake zone.

“We felt violent shaking. My colleagues say the insides of their houses are a mess, with everything smashed on the floor,” Wataru Matsumoto, deputy mayor of the town of Anamizu near the epicentre, told NHK.

Takeshi Hachimine, seismology and tsunami section chief at the Meteorological Agency, said the affected region was not considered a quake-prone area. The last major quake that caused casualty there was in 1933 when three people died.

He warned that after aftershocks were expected.

Japan sits atop four tectonic plates and is one of the world’s most earthquake-prone countries. The last major quake to hit the capital of Tokyo killed some 142,000 people in 1923 and experts say the capital has a 90 per cent chance of suffering a major quake in the next 50 years.

In October 2004, a magnitude-6.8 earthquake hit northern Japan, killing 40 people and damaging more than 6,000 homes. It was the deadliest to hit Japan since 1995, when a magnitude-7.2 quake killed 6,433 people in the western city of Kobe.

Powerful quakes in 1703, 1782, 1812 and 1855 also caused vast damage in the capital.

According to the US Geological Survey, the epicentre of Sunday’s quake was 225 miles north west of Tokyo. The USGS measured its magnitude at 6.7.

Two powerful earthquakes also shook the Pacific island nation of Vanuatu and a tsunami alert was issued for some of its southern islands, police said. There were no immediate reports of injuries.

Australia’s Emergency Management Office warned the quakes, measuring magnitude 7.2 and 6.0, could generate a tsunami affecting Vanuatu’s outlying islands, police spokesman Capt Arnold Giro said.

“We are moving communities to higher ground” on the islands, he said. “We have advised the islands to be alert for a possible tsunami.”

Police and emergency services were still checking the effects of the quakes, Giro said.