A tsunami as high as three metres could hit Japan’s northeastern coast after an earthquake with an estimated magnitude of 7.6 occurred offshore on Monday, the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) said.
Japan’s Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, in brief comment to reporters, said the government set up an emergency task force to urgently assess the extent of damage. “We are putting people’s lives first and doing everything we can,” she said.
JMA issued a tsunami warning for Aomori, Iwate and Hokkaido prefectures and a tsunami advisory for Miyagi and Fukushima prefectures.
“There is a possibility that further powerful and stronger earthquakes could occur over the next several days,” a JMA official said at a briefing.
The epicentre of the quake was 80 km off the coast of Aomori prefecture, at a depth of 50 km, the agency added.
On Japan’s 1-7 scale of seismic intensity, the tremor registered as an “upper 6” in Aomori prefecture — a quake strong enough to make it impossible to keep standing or move without crawling.
In such tremors, most heavy furniture can collapse and wall tiles and windowpanes are damaged in many buildings.
East Japan Railway suspended some train services in the area, which was also hit by the massive 9.0-magnitude quake in March 2011.
No irregularities were reported at nuclear power plants in the region run by Tohoku Electric Power and Hokkaido Electric Power, the utilities said.
Tohoku Electric initially said thousands of households had lost power, but later lowered that number to the hundreds.
Japan is one of the world’s most earthquake-prone countries, with a tremor occurring at least every five minutes.
Located in the “Ring of Fire” arc of volcanoes and oceanic trenches partly encircling the Pacific Basin, the country accounts for about 20% of the world’s earthquakes of magnitude 6.0 or greater.