A 7.8-magnitude earthquake struck off the Japanese coast on Saturday, geologists said, shaking buildings in Tokyo and setting off car alarms. Despite the huge power of the quake, there was no risk of a tsunami, The Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre reported.
Residential buildings swayed for around a minute as the quake built in intensity at around 8.30 pm
(1130 GMT), a report said.
Meanwhile, fresh aftershocks were felt in Nepal even after a month of the country’s worst earthquake took place on April 25.
A 4-magnitude aftershock was recorded at 1.55 am, with epicentre at Dhading district, according to the National Seismological Centre, Kathmandu. With this, total number of aftershocks since the April 25 quake has reached 291. However, there were no immediate reports of injuries or damage from Japan.
The epicentre was 676 kilometres below the earth’s surface. It was centred on a remote spot in the Pacific Ocean around 870 kilometres south of Tokyo, the US Geological Survey said.
Yoshiyuki <g data-gr-id="48">Sasamoto</g>, who runs a traditional guest house on Chichijima, one of the closest inhabited places to the epicentre, told NHK the shaking had been violent.
“Initially a weaker quake hit and it stopped. Then the big one came. It was so strong that I couldn’t stand still and couldn’t walk,” he said.
Both runways at Narita Airport, the main international gateway to Tokyo, were temporarily closed while inspections were carried out. Trains in Tokyo were also temporarily halted and a football match in the city was briefly suspended.
There were no reported abnormalities at any of the region’s mothballed nuclear power plants. A massive undersea quake that hit in March 2011 sent a tsunami <g data-gr-id="43">barrelling</g> into Japan’s northeast coast.
As well as killing thousands of people and destroying communities, the waves also swamped the cooling systems at the Fukushima nuclear plant, sending three reactors into meltdown.
Japan sits at the meeting place of four tectonic plates and experiences around 20 <g data-gr-id="42">per cent</g> of the world’s most powerful earthquakes every year.