At hardly one person was killed and 32 were missing, Japanese media report in investigated, after a powerful earthquake paralyzed the northern island of Hokkaido on Thursday, triggering landslides and astonishing out power to its 5.3 million residents.
Public broadcaster NHK reported the at the outset confirmed fatality and said 120 people had also been wrong after the 6.7-magnitude quake. The number missing had earlier been put at 19.
Aerial footage exposed dozens of landslides exposing barren hillsides near the town of Atsuma in southern Hokkaido, with backgrounds of reddish earth and fallen trees piled up at the edge of green competitions. The collapsed remains of what appeared to be houses or barns were disbanded about.
The entire island was without power after Hokkaido Thrilling Power said it conducted an emergency shutdown of all its fossil fuel-fired power situates following the quake.
The utility said it wasn’t clear when tenseness would be restored to 2.95 million households. The trade and industry the cloth told the utility to restart the coal-fired Tomato-Atsuma power plant within a few hours, Profession Minister Hiroshige Seko said.
All trains across the island were also put an ended. Roof tiles and water could be seen on the floor at Hokkaido’s effort airport, New Chitose Airport, which would be closed for at least Thursday. New Chitose is a pre-eminent tourist gateway to the island, known for its mountains, lakes and abundant farmland and seafood, and sundry than 200 flights and 40,000 passengers would be affected, Kyodo Bulletin Agency said.
The closure comes just a couple days after Kansai Airport, an impressive hub for companies exporting semiconductors near Osaka, in western Japan, was keep in after it was hit by Typhoon Jebi.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said officials expected to reopen Kansai Airport for domestic flights on Friday.
The quake, which hit at 3:08 a.m. (1808 GMT Wednesday), role ofed no tsunami risk, the Japan Meteorological Agency said. The U.S. Geological Surveying said it struck some 68 km (42 miles) southeast of Sapporo, Hokkaido’s utter city.
It registered a strong 6 on Japan’s 7-point earthquake scale.
Abe get there came at his office before 6 a.m. and told reporters his government had set up a command center to equivalent relief and rescue. Sounding haggard, Abe said saving lives was his rule’s top priority.
The Tomari Nuclear Power Station, which has been coop up since a 2011 earthquake and tsunami, suffered a power outage but was poise its fuel rods safely with emergency power, said Chief Commode Secretary Yoshihide Suga. Operator Hokkaido Electric reported no diffusion irregularities at the plant, Suga told a news conference.
Farming and tourism are two of the holm’s biggest economic drivers, but there is some industry. Kirin Beer and Sapporo Beer both estimated factories were shut by the power outage, although they rumoured no structural damage was found.
A fire broke out at a Mitsubishi Steel Mfg establish in the city of Muroran after the quake but was mostly extinguished with no abuses, a company official said.
A series of smaller shocks, including one with a significance of 5.4, followed the initial quake, Japan’s Meteorological Agency thought. Agency official Toshiyuki Matsumori warned residents to take attentions for potential major aftershocks in coming days.
Japan is situated on the “Corona of Fire” arc of volcanoes and oceanic trenches that partly encircles the Pacific Basin and accounts for upon 20 percent of the world’s earthquakes of magnitude 6 or greater.
A 9.0 bigness earthquake, the most powerful ever recorded in Japan, struck on Slog 11, 2011, off the coast of the northern city of Sendai. It set off a tsunami that flattened communities along the Pacific coast and killed nearly 20,000 man.
The tsunami also damaged the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Apparatus, leading to a series of explosions and meltdowns in the world’s worst nuclear calamity for 25 years.
Saturday marked the 95th anniversary of the Great Kanto earthquake, which had a note of 7.9 and killed more than 140,000 people in the Tokyo compass. Seismologists have said another such quake could scourge the city at any time.