Residents in Fukushima and Miyagi prefectures were yesterday cleaning their homes after a sleepless night following a magnitude 7.4 earthquake that struck off Japan’s northern coasts, smashing furniture, knocking out power and killing four people.
The region is part of an area devastated by a deadly magnitude 9 earthquake and tsunami 11 years ago that caused nuclear reactor meltdowns, spewing massive radiation that still makes some parts uninhabitable.
Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno yesterday morning told reporters that four people died during the quake and the cause of their deaths are being investigated, while 107 people were injured.
Photo: AFP
A man in his 60s in Soma died after falling from the second floor of his house while trying to evacuate, and a man in his 70s died of a heart attack, Kyodo News reported earlier.
The Japan Meteorological Agency early yesterday lifted its low-risk advisory for a tsunami along the coasts of Fukushima and Miyagi. Tsunami waves as high as 30cm reached Ishinomaki, about 390km northeast of Tokyo.
The agency upgraded the magnitude of the quake to 7.4 from 7.3, and the depth from 60km below the sea to 56km.
Residents in hard-hit areas found new damage in daylight yesterday, cleaning their homes, putting fallen furniture and appliances back into place, and scooping up broken dishes and windows.
At a hotel in Yabuki in Fukushima, where its wall was broken, front door thrown out of place and dishes were broken, employees were starting to clean up.
“I don’t even know where to start,” hotel president Mineyuki Otake told NHK.
NHK footage showed broken walls of a department store building that fell to the ground and shards of windows scattered on the street near the main train station in the inland prefectural capital of Fukushima city. Roads were cracked and water poured out from pipes underground.
Self-Defense Forces yesterday delivered fresh water to residents in Soma, Iitate and several other coastal towns in Fukushima where water systems were damaged.
Footage also showed furniture and appliances smashed to the floor at apartments in Fukushima. Cosmetics and other merchandise at convenience stores fell from shelves and scattered on the floor.
In Yokohama, near Tokyo, an electric pole nearly fell.
Tokyo Electric Power, which operates the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant where the cooling systems failed after the 2011 disaster, yesterday said that workers at the site — which is being decommissioned — found some tanks holding treated radioactive water were out of alignment due to the rattling, and what could be a steel beam fell from a roof of the No. 4 reactor building, which has no fuel inside.
Japan’s Nuclear Regulation Authority said a fire alarm went off at the turbine building of No. 5 reactor at the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant, but there was no actual fire.
Water pumps for the spent fuel cooling pool at two of the four reactors at Fukushima Daini nuclear power plant briefly stopped, but later resumed operation. Fukushima Daini, which survived the 2011 tsunami, is also set for decommissioning.
More than 2.2 million homes were temporarily without electricity in 14 prefectures, including the Tokyo region, but power was restored at most places by the morning, except for about 37,000 homes in Fukushima and Miyagi, said Tohoku Electric Power, which services the region.
The quake shook large parts of eastern Japan, including Tokyo, where buildings swayed violently.
East Japan Railway said that most of its train services were suspended for safety checks. Many people formed long lines outside of major stations while waiting for trains to resume operation late on Wednesday, but trains in Tokyo operated normally yesterday morning.
A Tohoku Shinkansen express train partially derailed between Fukushima and Miyagi due to the earthquake, but nobody was injured, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said.
“We are doing the utmost in rescue operations and putting people’s lives first,” Matsuno said.
He urged residents in the affected areas to use extra caution for possible major aftershocks for about a week.
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