Tsunami waves hit Japan after Pacific quake
Pastor Dale Morgan
Tsunami waves hit Japan after Pacific quake*
By Elaine Lies
Reuters
Saturday, January 13, 2007; 9:05 AM
TOKYO (Reuters) - Tsunami waves hit northern and eastern Japan on
Saturday after a powerful earthquake in the Pacific prompted tsunami
warnings in Japan, Russia and Alaska.
Watches were also mounted in Guam, Taiwan, the Philippines and Hawaii,
island territories nervous of a repeat of the disaster two years ago
when a quake in the Indian Ocean created giant waves that killed 230,000.
A 50-cm (18-inch) wave was reported at Chichijima in the Ogasawara
islands, some 1,200 km (750 miles) south of Tokyo, and several smaller
waves on Hokkaido and northern Japan, but there were no reports of
injuries and no immediate reports of damage.
Evacuation advisories had been issued for tens of thousands of
households in Japan but all warnings were canceled at 10:10 p.m.
The USGS (U.S. Geological Survey) put the quake magnitude at 8.2, a
"great" tremor, and said its epicentre was in the northern Pacific, 525
km (325 miles) east northeast of Kurilsk, Kurile Islands, and 1,710 km
(1,065 miles) northeast of Tokyo.
The same area was struck by a powerful quake in November, prompting
evacuations and tsunami warnings, but then too only small waves reached
Japan.
An official in Russia's Emergencies Ministry told Reuters the threat of
a tsunami had passed.
"Half-past eight, nine o' clock Moscow time was the approximate time the
threat of a tsunami was due to appear. That time passed, and the threat
did not materialize. Everything is normal," the official said.
RESIDENTS EVACUATED
Japan's Meteorological Agency had said a tsunami as tall as a meter
(yard) could hit parts of Hokkaido and smaller waves were likely to hit
a wide area of coast, from Hokkaido to Wakayama prefecture on Japan's
largest main island of Honshu.
Hokkaido officials urged residents to move to higher ground and fire
trucks made the rounds of coastal areas warning about the tsunami
threat. There were only moderate tremors in Hokkaido and no immediate
reports of casualties.
"We have cars going around the city telling people to evacuate,"
Takahiro Yamamoto, an official with the Monbetsu city government, told NHK.
Television footage showed a worried resident of Kushiro studying the
coast with binoculars from an evacuation center.
"I'm scared to return home," said a woman cradling a child.
Authorities in the Philippines said they issued a tsunami alert "level
one," warning residents on the northern and eastern coasts to wait for
further information and possible evacuation.
Officials in Taiwan said they would continue to monitor for several
hours but did not expect anything to happen.
A tsunami, Japanese for "harbour wave," travels at dizzying speed in the
open ocean and, when it approaches shallow water along a coast, slows
and swells. In an inlet, it can rise to a towering height very quickly.
In 1993, a tsunami caused by a 7.8 magnitude earthquake killed about 200
people on the island of Okushiri, off Hokkaido's southwestern coast.
(Additional reporting by Teruaki Ueno, Chikafumi Hodo and Linda Sieg in
Tokyo, Rosemarie Francisco in Manila, Donna Chiacu and Yereth Rosen in
the United States, and Moscow bureau)