Two dead and scores injured in Japan quake
TOKYO (Reuters) - A powerful earthquake with a magnitude of7.2 rocked rural northern Japan on Saturday, killing at leasttwo people, injuring more than 100 and sending landslidessweeping down mountainous hillsides.
The quake, at 8:43 a.m. (12:43 a.m. British time), wascentred in Iwate, a sparsely populated area around 300 km (190miles) north of Tokyo. The low population and weekend timingmay explain the lack of casualties from such a strong quake.
"I was outside and I wanted to rush back to the store, butI couldn't move because it was shaking," a liquor store ownertold Fuji TV.
"Broken bottles are all over the store, and there's a smellof alcohol everywhere."
One of the people killed was caught in a landslide, ChiefCabinet Secretary Nobutaka Machimura told reporters. A secondwas killed as he ran out of a building and was run over by acar.
Kyodo news agency said more than 100 people were hurt whilerail operator JR East said 2,000 were trapped on bullet trainsthat stopped between stations.
Earthquakes are common in Japan, one of the world's mostseismically active areas. The country accounts for about 20percent of the world's earthquakes of magnitude 6 or greater,prompting tough building codes to try to limit damage.
A Japan Meteorological Agency official told a newsconference that aftershocks were likely to continue for sometime.
Four people were badly injured near the airport in thenortheast coastal city of Sendai as a bus they were travellingin was jolted by the earthquake, TV reported.
"I was at home and we had finished eating breakfast," saidAkira Nishimura, an official from the city hall in Kurihara inhard-hit Miyagi prefecture. "We got under the table", he saidreferring to himself, his 4-year-old child and his wife.
The government had set up an emergency response centre, theTokyo Fire Department sent a relief team and Iwate GovernorTakuya Tasso asked for help from a military disaster reliefunit, Kyodo News reported.
NUCLEAR PLANTS OK
Nuclear power plant operations were unaffected, althoughaftershocks continued and a government official said 22,000people had lost electricity supplies.
The focus of the magnitude 7.0 tremor was 10 km (6 miles)underground in Iwate and Miyagi prefectures, the JapanMeteorological Agency said on its website.(http://www.jma.go.jp/en/quake/14090100384.html)
Children and teachers at a daycare centre were slightlyinjured, and some highways were closed, Japanese televisionreported, with aerial pictures showing landslides that hadswept through a house and swamped some roads.
In worst hit areas, the earthquake was measured at an upper6 on a Japanese intensity scale, which measures ground motion.It may be impossible to keep standing in a quake with thatreading, the meteorological agency says.
"It shook for about two minutes," Kazue Hishiya, manager ofa hotel in Iwate prefecture, said by telephone.
"Three television sets fell off shelves, elevators havestopped, and we've turned off the boiler."
Another Kurihara city official said that a Japanese-styleinn had been hit by a landslide, blocking the first floor, andthat guests had moved to the second floor.
A JR East spokesman said it could take nine hours tocomplete safety checks and resume bullet train services.
A spokesman for Tokyo Electric Power Co, Japan's biggestutility, said two of the company's nuclear power plants inFukushima prefecture, just south of Miyagi prefecture, wererunning as usual and there were no disruptions from the quake.
An official at Tohoku Electric Power Co said its nuclearplants at Onagawa and Higashidori were running as usual.
Top Japanese refiner Nippon Oil's 145,000 barrel-per-daySendai refinery appeared not to have been damaged after thequake, a company official said. The refinery is currently shutfor scheduled maintenance.
Sony and Fujitsu said they had stopped production atsemiconductor factories in the region but had not found anydamage so far.
In October 2004, an earthquake with a magnitude of 6.8struck the Niigata region in northern Japan, killing 65 peopleand injuring more than 3,000.
That was the deadliest quake since a magnitude 7.3 tremorhit the city of Kobe in 1995, killing more than 6,400.
(Additional reporting by Isabel Reynolds, Yoko Kubota,Linda Sieg, Yuzo Saeki, Chikafumi Hodo, Osamu Tsukimori andNathan Layne; Writing by Hugh Lawson; Editing by Rodney Joyceand Jerry Norton)