Even for the Japanese, accustomed to seismic tremors, the earth shook on Wednesday. Eastern Japan was rocked by a strong 7.3 magnitude earthquake, according to the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA). The body has issued a tsunami warning for much of the northeast coast.
The epicenter of the quake, which occurred at 11:36 p.m. (3:36 p.m. French time), was located off the coast of Fukushima prefecture, and the hypocenter 60 km deep, according to the JMA. A warning for waves of one meter in height has been issued by this agency.
2 million households without electricity
The tremor, long and strongly felt including in Tokyo, deprived more than two million homes of electricity in the central region of Kanto, including nearly 700,000 in the Japanese capital, according to the operator Tepco. Some 156,000 homes were also without electricity in the northeast of the country, according to the company Tohoku Power Electric.
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida told reporters that the government was trying to gather information to assess the situation. “We will do our best to help those affected. [par le séisme] and communicate information appropriately,” he said.
The Specter of Fukushima
The Tepco company clarified on Twitter being in the process of checking on its facilities, including the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, which had been severely damaged by a gigantic tsunami caused by a magnitude 9 earthquake on March 11, 2011. However, there are no anomalies at the nuclear power plant in Fukushima Daiichi after the earthquake, according to an official source.
Japan observed a minute’s silence last Friday in memory of the 2011 disaster, which left more than 18,500 people dead and missing and forced more than 165,000 people in Fukushima Prefecture to evacuate their homes due to radioactive emissions from the plant. damaged, where the cores of three nuclear reactors had melted.
