Tsunami warning lifted after Japan quake

Tsunami warnings were immediately issued for waves of 1 to 3 meters (3 to 10 feet), and soon after some were spotted off the coast, according to the Japanese Meteorological Agency.

A wave of up to 1.4 meters (4.5 ft) high was recorded at Sendai, about 70 km (45 miles) north of Fukushima, with smaller waves hitting ports elsewhere along the coast, public broadcaster NHK said.

The focus of the quake that struck at 5:59 a.m. was believed to be off the coast of Fukushima Prefecture.

The Fukushima nuclear reactors that were damaged during the 2011 meltdown have been since shut down, but the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) still maintains cooling systems to prevent the spent nuclear material from overheating and spewing radioactive waste into the air and ocean.

It was the largest natural disaster in the northeast Japan region since the 2011 quake and some large aftershocks the same day. The Japanese Meteorological Agency (JMA) described the seismic event as an aftershock of 2011’s devastating quake which was recorded as a 9.1 on the Richter Scale, the global logarithmic standard for measuring seismic activity. Over 3,000 people fled to evacuation centers in Fukushima Prefecture.

There were no immediate reports of damage or changes in the radiation level at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, which suffered a triple meltdown after the 2011 natural disaster.

“There has been no major damage to the Fukushima Daiichi or Onagawa plant” in Miyagi prefecture, he said. In this image made off a video released by Miyagi Prefectural Police, water rush up Sunaoshi river in Tagajo, Miyagi prefecture Tuesday, Nov. 22, 2016. “I’m so scared. But my concern is rather the situation at the nuclear plant”.

The Japan Meteorological Agency put the quake at 7.4 magnitude, while the United States Geological Survey said it was 6.9 magnitude.

The powerful quake also shook buildings in Tokyo, 230 kilometres to the south.

However, while yesterday’s natural disaster triggered tsunami warnings, there were no reports of deaths or serious damage.

The airport in Sendai was temporarily closed and bullet train service was interrupted along several rails lines in the region early Tuesday.

Some evacuees took to Twitter to express their fears.

Motoyuki Ushiyama, a professor at Shizuoka University and an expert on disaster information, said: “Forecast heights for tsunami can always turn out to be different from the actual ones”.

Japan sits at the junction of four tectonic plates and experiences a number of relatively violent quakes every year. Assistant Professor Wei Shengji of the Earth Observatory of Singapore said while aftershocks are to be expected, it was unlikely that yesterday’s quake would foreshadow an even stronger natural disaster.