Magnitude-6.1 Earthquake Shakes Northeastern Japan

[News_Editor]

A strong earthquake has struck off the coast of northeastern Japan, but no tsunami is expected. The US Geological Survey says the magnitude-6.1 earthquake hit early Thursday and was centered about 107 km northeast of Hachinohe at a depth of 40 km. Japan’s Kyodo news agency said no abnormalities were reported at nearby nuclear power plants. No tsunami warning was issued. A massive magnitude-9.0 earthquake and tsunami ravaged Japan’s northeastern coastline in March last year, leaving some 19,000 people dead or missing and badly damaging the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant.—AP

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[folium]

As you can see from the above maps NE Japan is a busy place seismically. Lower map is activity since 1990 (each dot an earthquake, colour-coded by depth), upper map activity in 2012 alone. The green star is the most recent quake.

While I'm a great fan of enhancing awareness and understanding of seismic activity, it must be a quiet day on the World News desk if an earthquake off NE Japan is exciting news.

Since the March 2011 9.0 quake in March 2011 there have literally been thousands of after-shocks and this is continuing into 2012 and is likely to do so for some considerable time yet.

I am sad enough to have a phone alert whenever a quake worldwide occurs >5.0 magnitude. Luckily it has filters installed which enables me to restrict the reporting of quakes from NE Japan as they were way too frequent!

There was no tsunami, no casualties, no damage, basically nothing happened.

Edited May 24, 2012 by folium