A massive earthquake struck in the northern Pacific Ocean on Wednesday, triggering a tsunami warning for the coasts of Japan and Russia, officials said.
The earthquake registered 8,1 on the Richter scale at 8.15pm (11.15am GMT) in the Pacific, about 600km north-east of Japan’s main northern island of Hokkaido, according to the Japan Meteorological Agency.
It said waves of up to two meters could hit Japan’s northern coast and Russia’s Kuril islands as early as 9:10pm (12.10pm GMT). It issued warning orders for all of Japan’s east coast north of Tokyo.
The agency urged residents to head to higher ground, a warning passed on by local authorities. Hokkaido authorities said they were issuing mandatory evacuation orders for 10 municipalities.
The United States Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre, which estimated the quake at 7,7 magnitude, said that the warning was in effect for both Russia and Japan.
“It is not known that a tsunami was generated. This warning is based only on the earthquake evaluation. An earthquake of this size has the potential to generate a destructive tsunami that can strike coastlines in the region near the epicentre within minutes to hours,” it said.
The quake was too far away to be felt in Japan’s major population centres.
Television footage showed rain but calm waters on Nemuro, a Japanese port city facing the Kuril chain.
“We have issued an evacuation warning to all residents living near the coast,” said Hiroyuki Taniguchi, a local official in Nemuro.
“We have not had any sign of high waves. So far, there is no confusion in the city. We did not feel any jolts,” he said.
In Tokyo, the government set up a special communication office to collect information about the tsunami.
Japan is home to 20% of the world’s major earthquakes, which are frequently felt in major cities.
Japan prides itself on having one of the world’s more accurate systems for predicting earthquakes.
It helped share information with other countries after the Indian Ocean tsunami of December 2004 that killed about 220 000 people, 168 000 of them in the Indonesian province of Aceh.
In Japan’s latest major deadly earthquake, more than 50 people were killed and hundreds injured in a 6,8-magnitude quake in 2004 in the Niigata region north-west of Tokyo. – AFP