Magnitude 7 earthquake strikes Japan
Japan was rocked by a big earthquake on Thursday. According to the weather forecasting agency in Japan, the earthquake recorded a magnitude 7.0 on the Richter scale. Officials said the quake’s epicenter was located 60 kilometers below sea level, off the northeastern coast of Japan’s northern main island of Hokkaido. There is currently no news of any property damage from the earthquake.
News channels showed the shelves moving in their offices in Kushiro on the southeast coast of Hokkaido. The Japan Meteorological Agency said that the Fukushima region of Japan had also experienced a tremor of 5.5 magnitude earthquake on Wednesday. The agency had reported that the epicenter of the quake was 37.3 degrees north latitude and 141.4 degrees east longitude at a depth of 80 kilometers from the ground surface.
It is worth mentioning that the tsunami that occurred after the 9.0 magnitude earthquake under the sea on 11 March 2011 caused major destruction in Japan. The sea water began to leak as it entered the Fukushima Daiichi plant. No one was officially killed due to the leak, but about 18,500 people were killed in the tsunami. After the nuclear accident, more than 40 patients hospitalized died after evacuating the area.
In this case, three officers operating the Fukushima plant were charged with negligence in taking better security measures which were later acquitted. In 2015, sensors at the Fukushima Nuclear Plant detected new radiation of very high capacity in the area. These radiation have been mixed with radioactive water in the sea, which again posed a threat to the plant being removed.
