Strong Earthquake Hits North Japan, Shakes Tokyo

26/05/2003| IslamWeb

A strong earthquake hit northern Japan near Sendai city on Monday afternoon, causing house fires in the downtown area and rocking buildings as far away as Tokyo 302 km (189 miles) to the south. National broadcaster NHK said the quake measured six on a Japanese scale of seven in some areas in the north, and seven on the open-ended Richter scale, about the same strength as a devastating quake in the Japanese city of Kobe eight years ago. NHK said the quake, which struck at 6.24 p.m. (0924 GMT), was centered just off the northeast coast of Japan at a depth of 60 km, but there was no danger of a tsunami, or giant wave. There was no immediate news on casualties. Television showed pictures of at least two buildings on fire in central Sendai and fire trucks on the scene. Sendai has a population of just over one million and is the largest city in the mostly agricultural northeastern Touhoku region. "I was surprised because it shook so strongly," an official in Morioka city, about 500 km north of Tokyo, told NHK. "It shook strongly enough to make you want to hang on to something," said the official, who was on the sixth floor of a building when the quake hit. In Tokyo, buildings swayed strongly and lamps swayed from side to side, sending workers scurrying to the doors. In supermarkets in the capital, products were shaken from shelves, although activity in the streets was normal. The Cabinet Office in Tokyo said the government had set up an emergency task force. East Japan Railway said it had stopped operations of bullet trains in the area and NHK said highways in the area has been closed. Tokyo's Haneda airport suspended flights. Telecoms firms Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp and NTT DoCoMo Inc said they were checking to see whether the earthquake has caused any disruption to the nation's telecommunications networks. The yen fell in European markets on news of the quake, which came after Tokyo markets closed. The strength of the quake, which lasted about a minute, was about the same as the one that hit the western city of Kobe in 1995 leaving 6,430 dead. A quake that hit Algeria on May 21 measured 6.7 on the Richter scale. **PHOTO CAPTION*** Earthquake in Japan in 1995, Collapse of Bank Building in KOBE . Photo courtesy of Tokyo University