Strong earthquake causes one death, 160 injured and material damage in Japan

At least one person died and more than 160 were injured in a powerful 7.4 earthquake in eastern Japan, according to an official balance revised downwards on Thursday.

Wednesday night's tremor collapsed parts of houses, opened cracks in roads and derailed a train, in which fortunately there were no casualties.

The damage seems relatively minor compared to the power of the earthquake, which mainly affected the departments of Fukushima and Miyagi, in northeastern Japan.

A government spokesman, Hirokazu Matsuno, said on Thursday that four people were killed and 107 were injured.

According to the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA), the earthquake occurred on Wednesday at 23h36 (14h36 GMT) and was magnitude 7.4 (revalued against 7.3 initially).

The epicenter was located 60 kilometers deep under the Pacific Ocean, off the coast of Fukushima, where a nuclear power plant was razed by a tsunami in 2011.

The JMA issued a warning of waves up to one meter high, but eventually 30 cm waves were recorded in Ishinomaki (Miyagi Prefecture), according to the agency, which had asked residents to move away from the waterfront.

The tsunami warning was lifted on Thursday morning.

“Police and rescue services have received a lot of calls in Fukushima and Miyagi,” Matsuno said overnight, urging people to watch for further tremors.

Small aftershocks were also recorded throughout the night and in some locations evacuation orders were issued to shelters.

At an evacuation center in the city of Soma, Fukushima, where dozens of residents had taken refuge, Yuzuru Kobashi, 82, told AFP that he had come to collect tarpaulins with his wife to protect their earthquake-damaged home.

“But at my age I can't get on the roof, so we're going to use them to protect the things we value in the house from the rain,” he said.

- Train derailed -

In Ishinomaki, a lifeguard explained to AFP that he was awakened by “an extremely violent tremor.”

“I heard the rumble of the ground. Instead of feeling afraid, the memory of the 2011 earthquake came to me,” he added.

The tremor, which was felt strongly even in Tokyo, initially left more than two million households without electricity in the capital and neighboring departments, according to Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco), but electricity was completely restored a few hours later.

Some 2,500 households were still without power in the northeast of the country on Thursday, according to Tohoku Electric Power.

The JR East railway company reported disruptions to its network. A 'shinkansen', Japan's high-speed train, derailed north of Fukushima city with 78 people on board, but there were no injuries.

And in the city of Sendai (northeast), a wall collapsed on the site of the historic Aoba Castle.

Last Friday, Japan observed a minute of silence in memory of the earthquake and tsunami of March 11, 2011.

That catastrophe left more than 18,500 people dead and missing, mainly due to the tsunami, and forced more than 165,000 people in Fukushima Prefecture to evacuate their homes for radioactive emissions.

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