Powerful 7.5-Magnitude Earthquake Strikes Off Japan, Tsunami Alert Issued
An earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 7.4 struck off the northeastern coast of Japan on Monday afternoon, the Japan Meteorological Agency said.
- World News
- 1 min read
Tokyo: A powerful earthquake struck off the northern Japanese coast, and the Japan Meteorological Agency issued a tsunami alert in the region.
The quake, registering a preliminary magnitude of 7.5, occurred off the coast of Sanriku in northern Japan at around 4:53 p.m. (0753 GMT), at a depth of about 10 kilometres (6 miles) below the sea surface, the agency said.
Japan’s NHK public television said a tsunami of up to 3 meters (10 feet) could hit the area shortly.
It's been 15 years since a magnitude 9.0 earthquake and tsunami on March 11, 2011, ravaged parts of northern Japan, causing more than 22,000 deaths and forcing nearly half a million people to flee their homes, most of them due to tsunami damage.
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Some 160,000 people fled their homes in Fukushima because of the radiation spewed from the tsunami-hit Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. About 26,000 of them haven’t returned because they resettled elsewhere, their hometowns remain off-limits, or they have lingering concerns about radiation.