A magnitude 6.9 quake hit off the coast of northeastern Japan, briefly triggering a tsunami advisory for Miyagi prefecture and causing shaking in Tokyo.
Japanese authorities warned of a tsunami alert that was issued after the strong earthquake of magnitude 6.9 on the open Richter scale that was registered this Saturday, March 20, 2021 in Miyagi prefecture (northeast Japan).
This earthquake registered a preliminary magnitude of 7.2 degrees before being reviewed, it was at 18:09 local time on Saturday (9:09 GMT) with its epicenter in the sea off the coast of Miyagi, about 60 kilometers deep, according to the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA), which released the tsunami risk upon detecting the tremor.
The Japanese state television NHK reported that the sea rose approximately one meter on the Miyagi coast a few minutes after the earthquake, without subsequent other significant incidents on the northeast coast of the Japanese archipelago.
Local authorities evacuated some 25,000 people from the municipalities of Shichigahama and Watari, in the coastal areas affected by the alert, and advised the rest of the population in the area not to approach the shores of the Pacific.
According to Noriko Kamaya, a seismological expert at the JMA, he advised the population to stay away from the coast despite the lifting of the alert and warned that changes in sea levels could be observed in Iwaye, Miyagi and Fukushima for approximately half a day after the earthquake.
The earthquake in Miyagi reached an intensity of level 5 higher on the Japanese scale, of a maximum of 7, in one of the areas affected by the intensity of the earthquake.
Several regions of northeast Japan the earthquake reached level 5 of that scale, while in the Tokyo metropolitan area, where the earthquake was felt strongly, it was level 3.
In Fukushima prefecture, where the crashed Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant is located, level 5 was also reached.
The operator of this plant, Tokyo Electric Power, indicated that it has not detected any abnormality in these nuclear facilities or those of Daini, nor variations in the radioactivity measurements in those areas.
The earthquake disrupted the transportation network in the Northeast. The Tohoku line of the shinkansen high-speed train was suspended from service between the Omiya and Hachinohe stations, and at least three expressways in Fukushima prefecture, south of Miyagi, were temporarily closed, NHK reported.
Some 200 homes were even without electricity in Kurihara, northwest of the town of Onagawa, off whose coastline where the earthquake occurred, which for the moment has not left notable damage to infrastructure in the area.
The Japanese Executive summoned an emergency team to collect the available information, according to the aforementioned state media. The meteorological agency warned of the possibility of other intense earthquakes in the area for a week.
The epicenter of the earthquake was located in an area close to the origin of the 9.1 magnitude earthquake on the Ritcher scale of March 11, 2011, which caused a tsunami that devastated northeast Japan and triggered the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident.
On February 14, another earthquake of magnitude 7.3 on the Ritcher scale occurred off the coast of Fukushima, according to the JMA experts it could be an aftershock from 2011 and could be followed by other similar tremors.