10 ms·

Magnitude 7.3 earthquake off the Coast of Fukushima Prefecture

167 points by Kuinox 5y ago

darkteflon 5y ago
That was big. First time since the 2011 quake that I actually put the emergency backpack on. Another 10 seconds and I reckon we would have woken our son and headed outside.
- 88840-8855 5y ago
  what is the emergency backpack?
  - alephnan 5y ago
    https://www.nhk.or.jp/sonae/en/goods/index.html https://www.nhk.or.jp/sonae/en/goods/index.html
  - ihumanable 5y ago
    They also sell these in the US as well. Products like this https://www.homedepot.com/p/Ready-America-2-Person-3-Day-Emergency-Kit-with-Backpack-70280/202218032 https://www.homedepot.com/p/Ready-America-2-Person-3-Day-Eme... They are good to have if you live in an area with natural disasters, 5-year shelf life and you just keep it somewhere that you can quickly grab if you ever need to evacuate.
    - hedora 5y ago
      Thank you! These are actually in stock locally and seem way more practical than the prepper food buckets.
    - heavenlyblue 5y ago
      HTTP Access denied from UK
andy_ppp 5y ago
It looks very close, is a tsunami possible?
- geerlingguy 5y ago
  Yes: https://tsunami.gov/?p=PHEB/2022/03/16/22075004/1/WEPA40 https://tsunami.gov/?p=PHEB/2022/03/16/22075004/1/WEPA40 Also, from Japan: https://www.jma.go.jp/bosai/map.html#5/38.411/143.174/&elem=warn&contents=tsunami&lang=en https://www.jma.go.jp/bosai/map.html#5/38.411/143.174/&elem=... It looks like the tsunami's arrival will be before high tide, so at least they have that going for them...
  - vesrah 5y ago
    edit: Misread, I apologize
    - fredoliveira 5y ago
      It is. I think you misread the previous comment. Tsunami will hit before the high tide, resulting in less potential for flooding.
- maybe_pablo 5y ago
  1m rise is expected, said the news.
sva_ 5y ago
Comparison: The 2011 earthquake had a magnitude of 9.0 - 9.1 (but it had a 7.2 foreshock 2 days before.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_T%C5%8Dhoku_earthquake_and_tsunami#Earthquake https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_T%C5%8Dhoku_earthquake_an...
- almog 5y ago
  While I hope it is a small quake compared to the 2011 earthquake, the main 2011 earthquake came 2 days after a 7.1 foreshock quake: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_earthquakes_in_Japan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_earthquakes_in_Japan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_T%C5%8Dhoku_earthquake_and_tsunami https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_T%C5%8Dhoku_earthquake_an...
- frellus 5y ago
  The thing most people don't mention is that after the March 11th 2011 earthquake, we had daily aftershocks, the kind you could easily feel, which lasted for months. Seems to happen mostly at night, most disconcertingly, as I was woken up out of bed more times than I could count with ones large enough to cause me to jump up and think the "big one" was hitting Tokyo. Took me a good year, and moving out of Japan, to calm down about it and realize just how much daily stress it had caused me, how much on edge you are after something like this. Of course, nothing happened, but when your system is constantly in heightened awareness mode, the way I expect soldiers in a warzone feel wondering if there's someone around the corner waiting to get you, you start to build up PTSD in a real way. Side note: add in a bit of nuclear fallout concern, plus having young kids and some playgrounds in Tokyo getting abnormally high enough readings they had to close them... oh, in addition to tainted food supply, and you'll maybe understand.
  - yamazakiwi 5y ago
    I remember the aftershocks, and I still have ptsd regarding earthquakes. I've felt a few small ones back stateside and feels like it starts the cycle over again. Not sure how long it will take for me to get over it.
x62Bh7948f 5y ago
I felt a 3-ish small one for about 5 seconds and then it was over. About a minute later it began again but this time it was definitely over 4 (I’m in Tokyo). It was long too, almost a minute I think (by the end it was not so strong, maybe 4-5 during the first 15 seconds or so)
- mlindner 5y ago
  Just to clarify for others, the numbers used in the above post are shindo-scale which are a location-dependent measurement of actual movement. They are used much more in Japan versus magnitude numbers.
  - genewitch 5y ago
    i used to live very close to a fault in Los Angeles County, and the numbers i remember from the 80s and 90s don't seem to correlate to the numbers i hear now - i left CA in 2006. The running joke with my CA friends is "don't even tweet/post about it unless it's a 7.0" whereas a 7.0 would mean widescale destruction back when i lived there. I remember the Apple Valley Quake, it was a rolling quake, and it was somewhere between a 4.8 and a 5.4. It derailed trains, and caused a bunch of property damage. I had a ham radio at the time and i was tuned into two of the biggest repeaters in southern california (one being "the nut") and listened to the damage reports and movement of emergency crews. We were quite far from that one, and it wasn't violent, but it still caused property damage and power outages due to shorted lines. So i see a 7.3 magnitude, and since i no longer deal with earthquakes (just floods, hurricanes, and tornadoes), i have no frame of reference for how bad that is. Gauging off the running joke above, it's gotta be somewhat bad, right?
    - crazcarl 5y ago
      I'm no expert, but it looks like the Apple Valley big earthquakes were centered on land, and these Fukushima are centered off the coast. I would assume the closer to the center, the worse the damage, so perhaps that could explain it?
Kuinox 5y ago
Tsunami advisory: https://www.data.jma.go.jp/multi/tsunami/index.html?lang=en https://www.data.jma.go.jp/multi/tsunami/index.html?lang=en
coobird 5y ago
It was two earthquakes -- one "small" one and another "big" one that followed about a minute later. On TV, they were announcing the quake intensity of the first one and and there was a video feed of the Fukushima nuclear plant, as they usually do when there's a strong quake in that area. A moment later, the feed was shaking violently -- I thought it was a replay of what was taken earlier, but it must have been the "big" one. In Tokyo, we felt the secondary wave of the first overlapping with the primary of the second, so it was disorienting and scary. Although the quake intensity itself wasn't serious in Tokyo.
- coobird 5y ago
  Well, seems like a Shinkansen derailed. It doesn't seem very serious as there's someone tweeting about it from inside that train...[1] There's also a tweet that the part of the overhead power line broke off and fell[2], so it may take a while to get back in service... [1]: https://twitter.com/tokimemo1130/status/1504110997732139024 https://twitter.com/tokimemo1130/status/1504110997732139024 [2]: https://twitter.com/R19i90/status/1504112207746936832 https://twitter.com/R19i90/status/1504112207746936832
  - ehnto 5y ago
    I would be interested to know more about the derailing. The shinkansen network has automated quake protections that stop the trains when a quake is detected, while that's not a foolproof system, I am sure a derailment at full speed would be very different to this picture. Either it worked or the train was at a slower part of it's journey, perhaps even stopped.
    - lazide 5y ago
      Shinkansen moves fast enough it's difficult to fully stop in time unless it gets a decent amount more warning. Probably slowed down enough it was pretty minor though.
    - foxyv 5y ago
      It probably slowed down/stopped for the first quake before the 7.3 hit and derailed it?
graderjs 5y ago
Largest quake in at least a year in Japan. Also strangely almost exactly 12 months since a 7.0 in the very same area (20 March 2021): https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/us7000dl6y/executive https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/us7000dl6y...
- kijin 5y ago
  The infamous 2011 earthquake was also in March. Is there any plausible reason for earthquakes to occur in the same region around the same time of year over and over again, or is it just coincidence? I don't think Japan has any large glaciers that could melt in the spring and shift the center of mass of the plate underneath, for example.
  - toyg 5y ago
    Maybe something to do with orbital forces / sea currents...?
  - graderjs 5y ago
    Great question. 1/12 x 1/12 x 1/12 -- odds seem kind of low...but could possibly be related to ocean currents, seasonal flow systems probably significantly shift the center of mass of large bodies of water, maybe related to temperature.
    - corpMaverick 5y ago
      Interestingly the two biggest earthquakes in my memory in Mexico City happened in the same day. Sept 19 1985 and 2017 Every year in Sep 19 there is a city wide simulacro. And then in 2017 an earthquake happened for real.
    - wilihybrid 5y ago
      Probabilities and statistics don't work like that. Between 2011 and now there's been loads of earthquakes in Japan, in most months, many stronger than 7.0.
bithavoc 5y ago
Do we have to worry about the nuclear plant? Is it still active?
- mark-r 5y ago
  No, I don't think that plant will ever be active again. There might be a danger if a tsunami came through again and washed more radioactive debris out from where it settled.
- npteljes 5y ago
  It's not active. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daini_Nuclear_Power_Plant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daini_Nuclear_Power_...
- amelius 5y ago
  We do have to worry about the nuclear agency that allowed it to be built there in the first place ...
prpl 5y ago
less than 1 week difference 11 years later.
MrYellowP 5y ago
Right on schedule.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
hanselot 5y ago
Shadonototra 5y ago
Chip plants and nuclear plants in high seismic activity land People who gave the greenlight should be in jail for the rest of their lives
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- fomine3 5y ago
  All nuclear plants survived for many earthquakes, but F1 failed for a tsunami.

167 points by Kuinox 5y ago

That was big. First time since the 2011 quake that I actually put the emergency backpack on. Another 10 seconds and I reckon we would have woken our son and headed outside.

88840-8855 5y ago
what is the emergency backpack?
- alephnan 5y ago
  https://www.nhk.or.jp/sonae/en/goods/index.html https://www.nhk.or.jp/sonae/en/goods/index.html
- ihumanable 5y ago
  They also sell these in the US as well. Products like this https://www.homedepot.com/p/Ready-America-2-Person-3-Day-Emergency-Kit-with-Backpack-70280/202218032 https://www.homedepot.com/p/Ready-America-2-Person-3-Day-Eme... They are good to have if you live in an area with natural disasters, 5-year shelf life and you just keep it somewhere that you can quickly grab if you ever need to evacuate.
  - hedora 5y ago
    Thank you! These are actually in stock locally and seem way more practical than the prepper food buckets.
  - heavenlyblue 5y ago
    HTTP Access denied from UK

andy_ppp 5y ago

It looks very close, is a tsunami possible?

geerlingguy 5y ago
Yes: https://tsunami.gov/?p=PHEB/2022/03/16/22075004/1/WEPA40 https://tsunami.gov/?p=PHEB/2022/03/16/22075004/1/WEPA40 Also, from Japan: https://www.jma.go.jp/bosai/map.html#5/38.411/143.174/&elem=warn&contents=tsunami&lang=en https://www.jma.go.jp/bosai/map.html#5/38.411/143.174/&elem=... It looks like the tsunami's arrival will be before high tide, so at least they have that going for them...
- vesrah 5y ago
  edit: Misread, I apologize
  - fredoliveira 5y ago
    It is. I think you misread the previous comment. Tsunami will hit before the high tide, resulting in less potential for flooding.
maybe_pablo 5y ago
1m rise is expected, said the news.

sva_ 5y ago

Comparison: The 2011 earthquake had a magnitude of 9.0 - 9.1 (but it had a 7.2 foreshock 2 days before.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_T%C5%8Dhoku_earthquake_and_tsunami#Earthquake https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_T%C5%8Dhoku_earthquake_an...

almog 5y ago
While I hope it is a small quake compared to the 2011 earthquake, the main 2011 earthquake came 2 days after a 7.1 foreshock quake: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_earthquakes_in_Japan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_earthquakes_in_Japan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_T%C5%8Dhoku_earthquake_and_tsunami https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_T%C5%8Dhoku_earthquake_an...
frellus 5y ago
The thing most people don't mention is that after the March 11th 2011 earthquake, we had daily aftershocks, the kind you could easily feel, which lasted for months. Seems to happen mostly at night, most disconcertingly, as I was woken up out of bed more times than I could count with ones large enough to cause me to jump up and think the "big one" was hitting Tokyo. Took me a good year, and moving out of Japan, to calm down about it and realize just how much daily stress it had caused me, how much on edge you are after something like this. Of course, nothing happened, but when your system is constantly in heightened awareness mode, the way I expect soldiers in a warzone feel wondering if there's someone around the corner waiting to get you, you start to build up PTSD in a real way. Side note: add in a bit of nuclear fallout concern, plus having young kids and some playgrounds in Tokyo getting abnormally high enough readings they had to close them... oh, in addition to tainted food supply, and you'll maybe understand.
- yamazakiwi 5y ago
  I remember the aftershocks, and I still have ptsd regarding earthquakes. I've felt a few small ones back stateside and feels like it starts the cycle over again. Not sure how long it will take for me to get over it.

x62Bh7948f 5y ago

I felt a 3-ish small one for about 5 seconds and then it was over. About a minute later it began again but this time it was definitely over 4 (I’m in Tokyo). It was long too, almost a minute I think (by the end it was not so strong, maybe 4-5 during the first 15 seconds or so)

mlindner 5y ago
Just to clarify for others, the numbers used in the above post are shindo-scale which are a location-dependent measurement of actual movement. They are used much more in Japan versus magnitude numbers.
- genewitch 5y ago
  i used to live very close to a fault in Los Angeles County, and the numbers i remember from the 80s and 90s don't seem to correlate to the numbers i hear now - i left CA in 2006. The running joke with my CA friends is "don't even tweet/post about it unless it's a 7.0" whereas a 7.0 would mean widescale destruction back when i lived there. I remember the Apple Valley Quake, it was a rolling quake, and it was somewhere between a 4.8 and a 5.4. It derailed trains, and caused a bunch of property damage. I had a ham radio at the time and i was tuned into two of the biggest repeaters in southern california (one being "the nut") and listened to the damage reports and movement of emergency crews. We were quite far from that one, and it wasn't violent, but it still caused property damage and power outages due to shorted lines. So i see a 7.3 magnitude, and since i no longer deal with earthquakes (just floods, hurricanes, and tornadoes), i have no frame of reference for how bad that is. Gauging off the running joke above, it's gotta be somewhat bad, right?
  - crazcarl 5y ago
    I'm no expert, but it looks like the Apple Valley big earthquakes were centered on land, and these Fukushima are centered off the coast. I would assume the closer to the center, the worse the damage, so perhaps that could explain it?

Kuinox 5y ago

Tsunami advisory: https://www.data.jma.go.jp/multi/tsunami/index.html?lang=en https://www.data.jma.go.jp/multi/tsunami/index.html?lang=en

coobird 5y ago

It was two earthquakes -- one "small" one and another "big" one that followed about a minute later. On TV, they were announcing the quake intensity of the first one and and there was a video feed of the Fukushima nuclear plant, as they usually do when there's a strong quake in that area. A moment later, the feed was shaking violently -- I thought it was a replay of what was taken earlier, but it must have been the "big" one. In Tokyo, we felt the secondary wave of the first overlapping with the primary of the second, so it was disorienting and scary. Although the quake intensity itself wasn't serious in Tokyo.

coobird 5y ago
Well, seems like a Shinkansen derailed. It doesn't seem very serious as there's someone tweeting about it from inside that train...[1] There's also a tweet that the part of the overhead power line broke off and fell[2], so it may take a while to get back in service... [1]: https://twitter.com/tokimemo1130/status/1504110997732139024 https://twitter.com/tokimemo1130/status/1504110997732139024 [2]: https://twitter.com/R19i90/status/1504112207746936832 https://twitter.com/R19i90/status/1504112207746936832
- ehnto 5y ago
  I would be interested to know more about the derailing. The shinkansen network has automated quake protections that stop the trains when a quake is detected, while that's not a foolproof system, I am sure a derailment at full speed would be very different to this picture. Either it worked or the train was at a slower part of it's journey, perhaps even stopped.
  - lazide 5y ago
    Shinkansen moves fast enough it's difficult to fully stop in time unless it gets a decent amount more warning. Probably slowed down enough it was pretty minor though.
  - foxyv 5y ago
    It probably slowed down/stopped for the first quake before the 7.3 hit and derailed it?

graderjs 5y ago

Largest quake in at least a year in Japan. Also strangely almost exactly 12 months since a 7.0 in the very same area (20 March 2021): https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/us7000dl6y/executive https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/us7000dl6y...

kijin 5y ago
The infamous 2011 earthquake was also in March. Is there any plausible reason for earthquakes to occur in the same region around the same time of year over and over again, or is it just coincidence? I don't think Japan has any large glaciers that could melt in the spring and shift the center of mass of the plate underneath, for example.
- toyg 5y ago
  Maybe something to do with orbital forces / sea currents...?
- graderjs 5y ago
  Great question. 1/12 x 1/12 x 1/12 -- odds seem kind of low...but could possibly be related to ocean currents, seasonal flow systems probably significantly shift the center of mass of large bodies of water, maybe related to temperature.
  - corpMaverick 5y ago
    Interestingly the two biggest earthquakes in my memory in Mexico City happened in the same day. Sept 19 1985 and 2017 Every year in Sep 19 there is a city wide simulacro. And then in 2017 an earthquake happened for real.
  - wilihybrid 5y ago
    Probabilities and statistics don't work like that. Between 2011 and now there's been loads of earthquakes in Japan, in most months, many stronger than 7.0.

bithavoc 5y ago

Do we have to worry about the nuclear plant? Is it still active?

mark-r 5y ago
No, I don't think that plant will ever be active again. There might be a danger if a tsunami came through again and washed more radioactive debris out from where it settled.
npteljes 5y ago
It's not active. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daini_Nuclear_Power_Plant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daini_Nuclear_Power_...
amelius 5y ago
We do have to worry about the nuclear agency that allowed it to be built there in the first place ...

prpl 5y ago

less than 1 week difference 11 years later.

MrYellowP 5y ago

Right on schedule.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

hanselot 5y ago

Shadonototra 5y ago

Chip plants and nuclear plants in high seismic activity land People who gave the greenlight should be in jail for the rest of their lives

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
fomine3 5y ago
All nuclear plants survived for many earthquakes, but F1 failed for a tsunami.