5.2-magnitude earthquake strikes off Japan’s Aomori Prefecture
Tokyo, Dec 16 (IANS/WISHAVWARTA) An earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 5.2 struck off Aomori Prefecture in northern Japan on Tuesday, the country’s weather agency said.
The temblor occurred at 2:38 p.m. local time (0538 GMT) off Aomori’s Pacific coast at a depth of 20 km, measuring 3 on Japan’s seismic scale of 7 in Hakodate City, Hokkaido Prefecture, said the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA).
The quake’s epicentre was located at a latitude of 40.9 degrees north and a longitude of 143.1 degrees east. No tsunami advisory was issued.
A week-long alert regarding the increased risk of another strong earthquake was lifted at midnight Monday after a 7.5-magnitude temblor struck northern and northeastern Japan on December 8, but JMA officials urged people to remain cautious, Xinhua news agency reported.
Earlier on December 12, Japan’s weather agency had issued a tsunami advisory for northern Japan’s Pacific coast after a magnitude 6.7 earthquake struck off Aomori Prefecture.
The JMA, which revised the magnitude of the quake up from 6.5, issued the tsunami advisory for the coastal areas of Hokkaido, Aomori, Iwate and Miyagi prefectures along the Pacific coast, with waves up to 1 metre expected.
The quake’s epicentre was at a latitude of 40.9 degrees north and a longitude of 143.0 degrees east.
On December 8, a 7.5-magnitude earthquake struck the same region, measuring upper 6 on Japan’s seismic scale of 7 in parts of Aomori, prompting the JMA to issue tsunami warnings for Iwate Prefecture and parts of Hokkaido and Aomori prefectures.
The Nuclear Regulation Authority had said there were no immediate signs of abnormalities at the region’s nuclear facilities.
The JMA had published a rare special advisory warning that another quake of similar or greater size was possible for another week.
The advisory covered the Sanriku area on the northeastern tip of Japan’s main island of Honshu and the northern island of Hokkaido, facing the Pacific.
The region is haunted by the memory of a massive 9.0-magnitude undersea quake in 2011, which triggered a tsunami that left around 18,500 people dead or missing.
In August 2024, the JMA issued its first special advisory, for the southern half of Japan’s Pacific coast warning of a possible “megaquake” along the Nankai Trough.
Japan sits on top of four major tectonic plates along the western edge of the Pacific “Ring of Fire” and is one of the world’s most seismically active countries.
The archipelago, home to around 125 million people, experiences around 1,500 jolts every year.
The vast majority are mild, although the damage they cause varies according to their location and depth below the Earth’s surface.
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