A powerful earthquake jolted the coast of northeastern Japan on Saturday evening at 6:09 pm. The terror of Japanese people was captured on video, showing once again how fragile we all are in the face of nature’s wrath.
The Japan Times brings the fearsome news of the new earthquake that occurred at a depth of 59 km. The Meteorological Agency even issued a tsunami advisory for Miyagi (Japanese prefecture north of Tokyo) following the jolt, but luckily, there’s no clue yet that there will be any material damage.
The magnitude 6.9 earthquake was followed by an evacuation order
The earthquake in question measured 6.9 magnitude, although it was initially evaluated at 7.2. Because of the tsunami advisory, the town of Watari issued an evacuation order for 2,527 homes and 6,911 residents.
福島市内、地震発生時の様子 #空ネット pic.twitter.com/ja3yAm1FBj
— 福テレ空ネット (@ftv_tenki) March 20, 2021
The Fukushima Prefecture was affected by another quake on February 14, and it caused many power outages and injured people.
Shizue Onodera declared for a broadcaster:
It was really bad, long shaking from side-to-side. It was even longer than the quake last month, but at least the building here is all right,
He continued:
Lots of bottles smashed on the floor,
The electricity is on.
Seismologists even believe that the previous earthquake from February 14 was an aftershock of the 2011 megaquake that reached magnitude 9. The latter was the strongest earthquake felt in Japan in a hundred years, and it left behind apocalyptic scenarios: over 15,000 deaths, 6,157 injured people, and 2,529 people missing. The total damage caused was estimated at about $360 billion.
Fortunately, the intensity of the recent earthquake from today (March 20) is still significantly below the one of the megaquake that devastated Japan 10 years ago. The megaquake was the fourth most powerful quake in the world since modern record-keeping began about a hundred years ago. The earthquake even caused huge tsunami waves that reached heights of up to 40.5 metres.
