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Hundreds injured in Japan quake
TOKYO, Japan -- Hundreds of people have been injured after the strongest earthquake so far this year shook the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido. The magnitude 8.0 quake hit at 4:50 a.m. Friday (1950 GMT Thursday) forcing the evacuation of 41,000 people along Hokkaido's central and eastern coast and prompting authorities to issue tsunami warnings as far away as Hawaii. Another temblor struck just over an hour later and multiple aftershocks have been felt. There have been no confirmed fatalities, although The Associated Press have reported two fishermen missing, apparently after being swept away by a tsunami. The quake left 323 people injured, 24 of them seriously. Doctors said the most common injures were broken bones, and cuts and bruises caused by falling objects. A fire broke out at an oil refinery on the island after the earthquake, and television stations reported a train derailment and a landslide near a highway tunnel. Closer to residential areas, cracks appeared in streets, roofs and walls of buildings collapsed, windows were shattered and goods in stores were smashed to the ground. Despite widespread damage to property, however, experts have said that the devastation could have been far worse. "My first reaction was that the damage was much smaller than what earthquakes of that magnitude are capable of doing," Yasuhiro Umeda, a seismologist at the Disaster Prevention Research Institute at Kyoto University told AP. Of the 41,000 people evacuated, according to AP, only 1,400 now remain in shelters. Two thousand homes are still without electricity. Japanese authorities said the quake's epicenter was located 50 miles (80 kilometers) offshore and about 20 miles under the seabed, about 796 miles northwest of Tokyo. Its depth and distance kept the magnitude 8.0 quake from becoming a major killer. According to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), earthquakes with magnitudes of 4.5 or greater can be recorded by sensitive seismographs around the world. On average, there is one magnitude 8.0 quake a year in the world, The Associated Press reported USGS geophysicist Brian Lassige as saying. The amount of energy released in a magnitude 8.0 earthquake is equivalent to that contained in 1.01 billion tons of TNT, according to the USGS. While authorities said late Friday the tsunami threat was beginning to subside, a tsunami watch was still in effect for Hawaii. "Based on all available data, a tsunami may have been generated by this earthquake that could be destructive on coastal areas even far from the epicenter," said the announcement from the National Tsunami Hazard Mitigation Program. Only six days ago a magnitude 5.5 quake shook Japan. The September 20 earthquake was centered nearly 540 miles (870 kilometers) south-southeast of Tokyo, near Japan's Bonin Islands, a remote volcanic island group in the Pacific Ocean. Seven women attending a memorial service at a Tokyo Buddhist temple were slightly injured when one of the temple's walls collapsed on top of them, officials said. Earlier this month, Japan marked the 80th anniversary of a magnitude 8.3 quake that devastated Tokyo and neighboring Yokohama, killing at least 140,000 people. In January 1995, a magnitude 7.2 temblor in Kobe killed more than 6,000 people. Also on Friday, a moderate earthquake shook northeastern Taiwan, the Central Weather Bureau said, but no damage or injuries were immediately reported. The magnitude 4.9 quake hit at 7:43 a.m. Its epicenter was under the Pacific Ocean about 12 miles east of Nanao town, the weather bureau said. Copyright 2003 CNN. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Associated Press contributed to this report.
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