Powerful quakes strike Japan, India
TOKYO — Powerful earthquakes just over 10 minutes apart rattled Japan and India on Tuesday, triggering panic on fears of a tsunami in the Andaman Islands and injuring more than 100 people southwest of Tokyo.
The unrelated quakes struck in the early hours, shutting down Japanese bullet train services and a nuclear power plant and causing a landslide that closed a major highway near the Japanese capital.
At least 110 people were injured, mostly by falling objects such as television sets, including three who were hospitalised in serious condition, prefectural government officials and police said.
The Japanese tremor registered a strong magnitude of 6.4, while the quake off the Andaman Islands in the Indian Ocean was a huge 7.6, according to the US Geological Survey.
Panic-stricken islanders fled their homes, fearing a repeat of the enormous Asian tsunami that devastated the Andamans in 2004 and killed around 220,000 people in the region as a whole.
"It was very frightening. Everything started shaking and people were running out of their homes," said Mrinal Sarkar, a villager in Diglipur in the northern Andamans. "People are afraid to go back inside."
But a tsunami alert issued for India, Myanmar, Indonesia, Thailand and Bangladesh was later cancelled by the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center of the US National Weather Service.
The emergency services control centre in Port Blair, the main town of the Andaman Islands, said there were no reports of casualties and property damage had been limited to cracks in some buildings on northern islands.
S.N. Jha, who heads the Andaman Islands' Disaster Management Committee, said emergency services had been put on alert across the territory within minutes of the earthquake being felt.
"In the end there was some panic in Northern Andaman, but there have been no reports of any serious damage to property or loss of life," Jha said.
The quake hit at 1:55 am (1955 GMT Monday) around 263 kilometres north of Port Blair, and was around 33 kilometres deep. Mild tremors were felt 1,190 kilometres away in the eastern Indian port city of Chennai.
The Japanese quake struck at 5:07 am (2007 GMT Monday) in Suruga Bay on the Pacific coast 170 kilometres southwest of Tokyo at a depth of 26.8 kilometres.
It shook buildings, threw objects from supermarket shelves, and jolted people from their sleep in Tokyo and areas southwest of the capital.
Japan's Meteorological Agency, which measured the quake at a revised 6.5, said there was no risk of a tsunami after initial waves raised the ocean surface by about 40 centimetres (16 inches) at Omaezaki, Shizuoka.
A large landslide triggered by the quake damaged a highway in the prefecture at Makinohara, causing long traffic jams.
Early warnings that the nearby Typhoon Etau could compound the damage by bringing heavy rains to the quake-hit region did not materialise when the typhoon veered east, heading away from the Japanese coast.
Torrential rains from the typhoon had earlier caused at least 13 deaths from flooding and landslides in western Japan.
The quake caused power failures in 9,500 households, utility officials said, while Central Japan Railway Co. suspended Shinkansen bullet trains in the quake-hit region before resuming the services several hours later.
Prime Minister Taro Aso's office set up an emergency centre shortly after the quake, which was followed by 13 noticeable aftershocks.
A strong earthquake had also hit central Japan late on Sunday. Around 20 percent of the world's most powerful quakes strike the country, which is located at the intersection of four tectonic plates.
The Andaman Sea area also witnesses frequent earthquakes caused by the meeting of the Indian plate with the Burmese microplate along an area known as the Andaman trench.
印度‧印度洋7.6級大地震‧多國恐慌發海嘯警報
（印度‧布萊爾港）印度洋安達曼島今日（週二，8月11日）發生7.6級大地震，一度觸發海嘯恐慌，當地居民紛紛逃離居所。
美國國家氣象服務局的太平洋海嘯警告中心隨後取消了在印度、緬甸、印尼、泰國、孟加拉發出的海嘯警報。
當局指出：“海平面數據顯示，不會發生大海嘯。”
不過，海嘯警告最初發出後，多國沿海地區的不少民眾都驚惶疏散。
未接獲損毀報告
安達曼島主要市鎮布萊爾港的警察管制中心指出，暫未接獲嚴重損毀以及傷亡報告。
地震於當地時間凌晨1時55分（大馬時間週二凌晨3時55分），發生在布萊爾港以北263公里，深度達33公里。
安達曼島在2004年的亞洲大海嘯事件中受嚴重創擊。當時，印尼蘇門達臘島外發生地震，引發海嘯，巨浪衝擊印度洋附近國家。
安達曼迪格里普爾村村民撒卡爾表示：“我非常害怕。所有東西開始晃動，人們逃離房屋，不敢回到屋內。”
距離安達曼1190公里外的真奈也出現微震。此外，印尼巴布亞北部沿海也在凌晨1時46分發生5.7級地震。
印度國家海嘯警告中心指出，海平面無顯示異常洶湧。一切正常。
地震地點去年風災逾13萬人死
此次地震震央位於緬甸伊拉瓦底三角洲西南部約364公里。當地去年5月發生嚴重風災，造成逾13萬8000人死亡。
在2004年海嘯事件後成立的泰國國家災難警告中心表示，當局也正在監視地震情況。
2004年的大海嘯造成22萬人死亡，多數罹難者來自印尼北部的亞齊省。斯里蘭卡、緬甸、泰國以及印度也有數千人死亡。
| A strong earthquake has struck Tokyo and central Japan, halting train services, closing motorways and causing a nuclear power station to shut down. At least 43 people were injured by the magnitude 6.4 quake, many of them by falling objects, officials said. No deaths have been reported. Separately, there was another powerful earthquake off India's Andaman Islands in the Indian Ocean. Both earthquakes triggered tsunami alerts, which were later cancelled. 'Huge tremble' In Japan, the magnitude 6.4 quake shook buildings, threw objects from shelves and jolted people from their sleep in Tokyo area at 0507 (2007 GMT Monday). The quake was centred in the Pacific Ocean, about 170km (105 miles) south-west of Tokyo, the US Geological Survey reported. Of those injured, at least three people are thought to be in a serious condition. "It was a huge tremble, like nothing I had experienced before," said Tadao Negami, a 69-year-old resident of Mishima city in Shizuoka.  Japan's seismologists are constantly waiting for the big one | "I couldn't stay seated on a chair. My daughter and my grandchildren were scared and surprised and they rushed downstairs," AFP news agency quoted him as saying. A large landslide triggered by the quake damaged a highway at Makinohara, Shizuoka, causing long traffic jams, television footage showed. The Hamaoka nuclear plant in Shizuoka immediately shut down two reactors after the quake, and the Shinkansen bullet train service was briefly suspended. 'Big one' expected While officials said there was no risk of a tsunami in Japan, another earthquake in India's Andaman Islands, prompted tsunami warnings there. The US Geological Survey said the quake - unrelated to Japan's - with a 7.6 magnitude hit the Indian Ocean about 257km (160 miles) north of Port Blair in the Andaman Islands. A tsunami watch called for India, Burma, Indonesia, Thailand and Bangladesh was later lifted without any tsunami being recorded. An earlier earthquake of magnitude 6.9 hit Japan on Sunday, but caused no damage or casualties. Japan is one of the world's most earthquake-prone countries, and experts believe Tokyo has a 90% chance of being hit by a major quake over the next 50 years. |
