Speaking at a news conference, Noriko Kamaya, an official for the meteorological agency, said residents should be prepared for aftershocks as strong as magnitude 6 in the coming days. He described Saturday night’s earthquake as itself an aftershock of the 2011 quake.
In Minami Soma, one of the Fukushima villages evacuated after the nuclear disaster in 2011, NHK reported that severe horizontal shaking lasted for about 30 seconds on Saturday.
Yu Miri, the author of “Tokyo Ueno Station,” winner of the National Book Award for translated literature, posted photos on Twitter showing bookshelves in her nearby home downed and the floors strewn with books.
Kyodo News reported that 30 people had been injured in the Fukushima and Miyagi regions, both on Japan’s east coast.
Japan has endured a history of devastating earthquakes.
Roughly a dozen powerful earthquakes have struck Japan in the past decade, several of them triggering tsunamis and landslides that have shaken parts of the country and destroyed countless buildings.
In 2016, more than 40 people died after two earthquakes rocked the southern island of Kyushu. The largest of the two registered a magnitude of 7.0, close to the intensity of the quake felt on Saturday, and several died in fires and landslides in the mountainous region.
In 2018, dozens died and millions lost power in their homes after a powerful quake in the northern island of Hokkaido triggered landslides. The quake that summer came just days after the largest typhoon recorded in 25 years struck Japan.
Makiko Inoue, Hisako Ueno, Hikari Hida and Elian Peltier contributed reporting.
Source Article from https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/13/world/asia/earthquake-japan-fukushima.html
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