A powerful earthquake with a magnitude 7.3 epicenter in the Fukushima region shook Japan’s northeast coast on Wednesday, shaking buildings, leaving parts of Tokyo without power and triggering a tsunami warning.
The tremor was recorded at night (morning in Brazil). Shortly after 11:36 pm local time (11:36 am EDT), a one-meter-high tsunami wave alert was issued for parts of the northeast coast.
So far there are no reports of deaths or injuries or material damage, apart from a power outage that affected 2 million homes, 700,000 of them in Tokyo, energy company TEPCO said.
The company explained on its Twitter account that it was checking the operations of the Fukushima nuclear power plant, which 11 years ago, on March 11, 2011, collapsed when it was hit by a tsunami that left 18,500 dead and missing.
Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said the government was working to assess the extent of damage after the quake.
Authorities have warned residents of Fukushima, Miyagi and Yamagata prefectures to expect aftershocks (aftershocks).
The Japanese archipelago is located in the so-called “Ring of Fire” of the Pacific, an arc of intense seismic activity where tectonic plates collide, which stretches across Southeast Asia and the Pacific basin.
