One of the dead was a man in his 60s who lived in the town of Soma, the local disaster prevention agency said Thursday.
A tsunami advisory was issued after Wednesday’s earthquake hit coastal prefectures of Fukushima and Miyagi, but was lifted on Thursday morning and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida later said “no anomalies” had been detected at any of the country’s nuclear power plants.
The earthquake had a preliminary epicenter depth of 60 kilometers (37 miles), the Japan Meteorological Agency said. It warned of tsunami heights up to 1 meter above normal tide level, with the first waves hitting the coast around midnight local time (11am ET).
About an hour and a half after the earthquake struck, an 8-inch tsunami hit the coastline of Japan’s Miyagi prefecture, according to the agency, urging people in affected areas to stay away from the coast.
A bullet train derailed near Fukushima as a result of the earthquake, but no injuries were reported, Kishida said at a news conference. According to public broadcaster NHK, 78 people were detained for four hours after the high-speed train derailed, but escaped unharmed through an emergency exit.
People injured in the quake have been taken to hospital in Fukushima’s Soma city, Kyodo News reported, without specifying the number of injured. Power throughout Tokyo has been restored, Tokyo Electric Power said.
The Meteorological Agency on Thursday urged the public to watch out for more seismic activity in the coming days. Masaki Nakamura, an agency official, urged people in the affected areas to stay away from the coast and not go into the sea until the tsunami warning was lifted. He also urged people to remain vigilant about the risk of mudslides.
The epicenter of Wednesday’s quake was 89 kilometers from that of the devastating 2011 quake that triggered a 30-foot tsunami that damaged several nuclear reactors in the area — resulting in the worst nuclear disaster since the Chernobyl incident in 1986. that disaster more than 22,000 people were killed or missing. Deaths were caused by the first earthquake and tsunami and by post-disaster health problems caused by the radiation leak.
The 2011 Japan earthquake measured 9.1 on the Richter scale, about 63 times stronger, and released about 500 times more energy than Wednesday’s earthquake.