Magnitude-5.3 earthquake hits Tokyo after Japan issued megaquake advisory (updated)
09/08/2024 12:17
(Adds details of the quake's damage, background on Nankai
Trough megaquake advisory)
TOKYO, Aug 9 (Reuters) - A magnitude-5.3 earthquake hit
Tokyo and eastern parts of Japan on Friday evening, the
government said, a day after it issued the first-ever advisory
about the risk of a huge earthquake in the west of the country.
Although damage to the areas closest to the epicentre was
not immediately clear, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said the
government had not received any reports of major damage,
speaking at his Tokyo office shortly after the quake.
The quake's epicentre was in the Kanagawa prefecture south
next to the capital, at a depth of 10 km (6.2 miles), Japan
Meteorological Agency (JMA) said.
Kanagawa does not lie within the western zone along the
Pacific coast known as the Nankai Trough, which was specified in
Thursday's advisory on a megaquake with magnitude 8 or higher.
No tsunami alert was issued after the government sent strong
tremor warnings for residents in Tokyo and prefectures of
Kanagawa, Saitama, Yamanashi and Shizuoka.
Some train lines, including Central Japan Railway's 9022.T
Shinkansen high-speed rail services, stopped operations in
regions near Tokyo and Kanagawa.
There were no reports of damage at the Hamaoka nuclear power
plant in Shizuoka and thermal plants in Kanagawa, the public
broadcaster NHK said.
(Reporting by Satoshi Sugiyama, Kantaro Komiya, David Dolan,
Mariko Katsumura and Rocky Swift; Editing by William Maclean and
Helen Popper)
((Kantaro.Komiya@thomsonreuters.com; Twitter: @kantarokomiya;))