Towns, villages and nuclear reactors were evacuated and airports shut while office workers rushed to higher floors in coastal cities as Japan came under the threat of tsunamis Wednesday following a massive earthquake in the Russian Far East.
The country was prepared but on edge, with the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami not forgotten and lessons learned from that disaster put into practice. Residents inland went about their business while coastal areas quickly implemented long-planned measures.
Around the world, countries readied for the arrival of the waves following the magnitude 8.7 earthquake that struck off the coast of Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula, about 1,500 kilometers from Hokkaido, with alerts being issued for Pacific islands, including Hawaii, the U.S. mainland and Ecuador, and tsunamis more than 3 meters tall said to be a possibility in some places.
By the end of the afternoon in Japan, the biggest waves to come ashore measured 1.3 m, with one death reported and no major damage. Elsewhere, the situation was much the same, with waves initially weaker than feared.
Officials in Japan warned the public to remain prepared, as tsunamis can be unpredictable and waves can peak long after the first come ashore, while the waves may not have reached areas a great distance from the epicenter.
"Tsunami can strike repeatedly over a long period of time. The waves that come after the first one may be larger, so it is important to continue evacuating until the tsunami warning or advisory is lifted," the Meteorological Agency said.
Each wave has a very long duration, which means it could take around an hour for a single wave cycle to pass, according to the agency, so tsunami activity can be observed over a prolonged period. The risk of high tsunami waves could continue for at least a day.
The strength of Wednesday morning’s earthquake, which occurred at 8:25 a.m., was initially estimated by the JMA and authorities overseas to have been magnitude 8.0. The JMA initially issued a tsunami advisory at 8:37 a.m. but later revised its assessment of the quake’s magnitude to 8.7 and upgraded its tsunami advisory to a warning at 9:40 a.m.
A significant revision of a quake’s magnitude is relatively rare, the JMA said.
The quake, the world’s strongest since the earthquake in 2011, was barely felt in Japan. The intensity registered a maximum of 2 on Japan’s seven-point shindo earthquake intensity scale in five cities and towns in Hokkaido, according to the weather agency.
A 2 reading on the shindo scale means that many people in a quiet place indoors will feel it, while hanging objects will sway slightly.
This century, the only other earthquakes of similar or more powerful intensity have been the 2011 earthquake, the magnitude 9.1 Indian Ocean earthquake in 2004, and the magnitude 8.8 off the coast of Chile in 2010, according to figures from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).
Wednesday’s Kamchatka earthquake is one of the 10 most powerful to ever be recorded, according to the USGS.
Waves up to 60 centimeters high were observed in Hokkaido and Kuji in Iwate Prefecture a little past 1 p.m., more than two hours after the first round of waves arrived on Japanese shores. Waves 10 cm to 50 cm high were recorded along wide areas of the Pacific coast from Hokkaido to Okinawa.
Later in the day, waves of 1.3 m were reported in Kuji.
If a tsunami coincides with high tide, the combined effect can cause sea levels to rise even further beyond the current tide level, the Meteorological Agency said, urging people in affected areas to exercise continued vigilance.
A JMA official pointed out that when the Kamchatka Peninsula was hit by a magnitude 9.0 quake in 1952, 1 m waves arrived on Iwate’s shores nine hours later, followed by smaller waves. The official noted that waves gradually increase in size and then gradually become smaller, which is why the JMA believes tsunamis will continue for at least a day.
The latest warning and advisory information can be confirmed on the Meteorological Agency website.
Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba urged residents in the affected areas to evacuate to higher ground or other safe locations, and instructed authorities to provide accurate information to the public and implement necessary measures in coordination with local municipalities.
The government has requested that authorities start transferring evacuees from temporary shelters to better-equipped facilities and take necessary measures to help them prevent heatstroke, Ishiba told reporters Wednesday evening. Japan recorded its highest ever temperature of 41.2 degrees Celsius on Wednesday.
A task force was set up at the Prime Minister’s Office at 9:40 a.m.
According to local reports, authorities issued evacuation orders for 1.9 million residents in coastal areas across the nation. The town of Urakawa, Hokkaido, issued a level-5 warning, the highest, to 10,463 people in nearly 5,000 households, warning them of imminent danger.
Ibaraki Prefecture issued evacuation orders to residents in the coastal cities of Takahagi and Hitachinaka and the village of Tokai. The city of Wakayama also ordered 175,000 people in 88,000 households in coastal areas to evacuate to higher ground at 11 a.m.
By the early evening, some of the tsunami warnings along the Pacific Coast had been downgraded to advisories.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi told a news conference Wednesday morning no damage had been reported on land or at sea. Three highways were blocked, and the operations of 41 railway lines were temporarily halted, he added.
In the Shiraoi district of Hokkaido, a woman in her 60s fell and got injured as she was seeking shelter, Hayashi said Wednesday afternoon. A woman in her 50s died as her car went over a cliff as she was heading to an evacuation site in the city of Kumano, in Mie Prefecture, according to news reports.
The runway of Sendai airport, in the Tohoku region, was temporarily closed.
Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc. ordered staff working at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant to evacuate and confirmed that they evacuated to higher ground. It has also confirmed that the process used to treat radioactive water before it is released into the ocean has not been affected. The utility has manually halted operations in line with protocols.
The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration issued a slew of warnings and advisories for U.S. islands in the Pacific and the west coast of the United States following the earthquake. A tsunami advisory was put in place for much of the U.S. west coast from the Mexican border up through parts of Canada and Alaska. Hawaii and Guam were placed under warning status.
The USGS recorded the magnitude of Wednesday morning’s earthquake as 8.8, occurring at 8:24 a.m. at a depth of 20.7 km, with its epicenter 119 km east-southeast of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky in Russia.
Two earlier earthquakes, registering magnitude 7.0 and 7.5 respectively, occurred off the coast of the Kamchatka Peninsula on the afternoon of July 20.
Minori Yoshida, 31, who works at a bank in the coastal city of Kushiro in Hokkaido, was among those who evacuated to the city's disaster management building after the tsunami warning was issued.
“Around 9:40 a.m., we received an alert that a tsunami could arrive by 10 a.m.,” Yoshida said. “Following company instructions, I evacuated to the fifth floor of the disaster management building.”
By around 10 a.m., roughly 50 people had gathered, she said, including local residents, nearby office workers and tourists. That number grew to about 100 by 10:30 a.m. A similar shelter was also set up on the fourth floor.
Yoshida added that her home is not located on high ground, so had she been there at the time, she would have needed to evacuate elsewhere. For now, her company has instructed employees to remain at the shelter until the warning is officially lifted. “I do worry that a stronger earthquake or tsunami could come,” she said, “but I’m grateful there’s a designated evacuation site close by.”
While the tsunami warning remained in effect and unease lingered, the atmosphere inside the shelter was relatively calm, Yoshida said. Bottled water was being distributed, restrooms were open and many evacuees passed the time chatting with acquaintances.
“There’s still some anxiety, especially with talk that a second wave could be larger than the first,” she said. “But at the moment, I’m not overly worried.”
In western Kushiro, roughly 100 people, including the clerks of local shops and people living in the vicinity, sought safety in the higher floors of a building of a local telecommunications company, said 67-year-old Tsutomu Ota, an executive at the company. The building is designated as a temporary evacuation site. As of 2 p.m., two-thirds of them had left, given the relative stability of the situation.
Traffic had also slowly resumed, with a number of cars heading to the outskirts from the city center.
“People will gradually go back to their activities once the alert is lifted,” said Ota.
Kuniyoshi Katsu, who runs an architectural firm in Ishinomaki, a coastal city in Miyagi Prefecture that was devastated by massive tsunamis on March 11, 2011, was sheltering on the third floor of his office in the heart of the city’s shopping district as of noon Wednesday.
“We’ve evacuated to the upper floors of our building,” Katsu said. “Other nearby shop owners have also moved to higher levels in their buildings.”
Disaster warning broadcasts were being issued regularly over the city’s loudspeaker system, providing updates on the situation, he said. At around 10 a.m., police had restricted access to the bridge leading toward the port, but those traffic controls appear to have been lifted.
“All the shops are currently closed, waiting for the tsunami warning to be lifted,” he added.
Minori Suzuki, 29, was at her guesthouse in central Hachinohe, a coastal city in Aomori Prefecture, when she heard the tsunami alert on her phone. The guesthouse is a safe distance from the coast, but throughout the morning, she offered her support to one of her neighbors, a French woman in her 20s, who was alarmed by the situation. Maps and information on areas at risk are often unclear on apps and websites, she added.
Suzuki is welcoming a family of foreign tourists to her guesthouse this evening and said she’ll make sure to inform her guests of the warning and the locations of evacuation centers as soon as they arrive.
“Information in English is so scarce in these situations,” she said.
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