Strong M6.7 earthquake rocks Niigata and Yamagata - Japan

June 18, 2019

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A magnitude 6.7 earthquake hit Niigata Prefecture on Tuesday night, recording a maximum of upper 6 on the Japanese seismic intensity scale to 7.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said early Wednesday that no fires, major damage nor serious injuries have been reported.

The quake, which occurred at around 10:22 p.m. off the coast of Yamagata Prefecture, prompted the Meteorological Agency to issue tsunami advisories for coastal areas of Yamagata and Niigata prefectures and the Noto area in Ishikawa Prefecture. The agency estimated the possible tsunami’s height to be as much as 1 meter.

A 10 cm tsunami was reported at Niigata port just after midnight, but JMA lifted the tsunami advisories for all three prefectures at 1:02 a.m.

The city of Murakami in Niigata Prefecture, which experienced an upper 6 level of seismic intensity, has set up 10 evacuation centers.

“It was a shake I had never felt in my life,” said a male city official, who was at home sleeping with his child at the time.

“At first there was a vertical shake that pushed me up from the bottom, then I felt that the jolt lasted about a minute,” he said.

The strong quake also hit Tsuruoka in Yamagata Prefecture with a lower 6. A lower 5 was recorded in Yurihonjo, Akita Prefecture, in Sakata, Yamagata Prefecture and in Nagaoka and Kashiwazaki in Niigata Prefecture.

Four people were injured in Sakata but they are not life-threatening injuries, according to a local fire department.

Tohoku Electric Power Co. said about 5,000 households were experiencing a power outage in Yamagata Prefecture while 2,800 were without power in Niigata as of 11:50 p.m.

Some highways and roads in Yamagata and Niigata prefectures have been closed because of fallen rocks.

The Secretariat of the Nuclear Regulation Authority said there no abnormalities were reported at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear complex run by Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc. The complex’s seven units have been idled since March 2012.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, who entered the prime minister’s office after 10:40 p.m., said at an urgent press conference he has been informed there are no problems at any of the nuclear plants in Japan.

East Japan Railway Co. said the operation of the Joetsu Shinkansen has been suspended. The railway operator had also stopped the Tohoku Shinkansen but the service later resumed.

The government has set up a task force to gather information.

The quake struck one year to the day after a magnitude 6.1 earthquake jolted Osaka Prefecture and killed six people.

The coastal region facing the Sea of Japan from Hokkaido to Niigata Prefecture has experienced similar big earthquakes in the past.

Shinji Toda, a professor of seismic geology at Tohoku University said, “Active faults are concentrated (around the area hit by the latest earthquake) and some of them likely moved.”

Toda pointed out that there are similarities in scale and mechanism between Tuesday’s quake and one that rocked Niigata in 2007.