A quake as powerful as magnitude 9 feared to hit the Nankai Trough off central and western Japan could max out the Japanese seismic intensity scale to 7 in areas surrounding the port of Nagoya, the city warned Monday.
The earthquake could measure upper 6 in the western half of the city, including JR Nagoya Station, with tsunami up to 3.6 meters high engulfing the port. The city, with a population of 2.27 million, also said ground liquefaction could occur in areas around the station.
The municipality released the worst-case scenario based on projections made earlier by the central government.
The city said 3.6-meter tsunami could hit the port within 96 minutes of the quake. This means a combined 7,700 hectares in the city's southwest, or about one-fourth of its area, could be flooded by water to a depth of at least 1 cm, the city cautioned.
That's larger than the central government's estimate.
The city is scheduled to release in March its estimates for the human and economic cost of a Nankai Trough quake. The Nankai Trough runs from Suruga Bay in Shizuoka Prefecture to Hyuganada off Miyazaki.