Strong earthquake in Taiwan: collapsed buildings, power outages and tsunami alert in southwestern Japan

A major earthquake was registered on Wednesday morning in eastern Taiwan, and a tsnuami alert was issued in Okinawa, in the southwest of the Japanese archipelago, informs news.ro.

UPDATE – According to the USGS, a new aftershock occurred at a depth of 10 km, with a magnitude of 5.7, 37 minutes after the initial earthquake, followed 8 minutes later by another aftershock of 5.5.

Images presented on television show buildings that have collapsed in the city of Hualien on the east coast of Taiwan, informs The Guardian.

Japan’s NHK TV reported that an initial 30cm tsunami had washed ashore on Yonaguni, a remote island just 110km from Taiwan, but warned that larger waves could follow.

ORIGINAL NEWS:

According to the Japanese Meteorological Agency, the magnitude of the earthquake was 7.5. The Japan Meteorological Agency described the earthquake as shallow, which could cause more damage.

The American Geological Institute USGS estimated the current magnitude at 7.4, and the depth of the earthquake at 34.8 km.

According to Reuters, the Central Meteorological Administration of Taiwan announced that the magnitude of the earthquake was 7.2 and was felt on Wednesday morning in Taipei, the capital of Taiwan. The strong earthquake left several parts of the city without electricity, according to a Reuters witness.

Television images showed buildings in the city of Hualien, located in eastern Taiwan, shaken from their foundations. The earthquake occurred around 8:00 a.m. local time (3:00 a.m. Romanian time), just a few kilometers south of Hualian, in eastern Taiwan.

STRONG REPLY

The initial earthquake was followed 13 minutes later by another, with a magnitude of 6.5, produced at a depth of only 11.8 kilometers, according to the USGS.

Japan has issued an evacuation advisory for coastal areas near the southern prefecture of Okinawa. Public broadcaster NHK urged people to stay away from the coast and head for higher ground, while warnings in English and Japanese appeared on the screen.

A tsunami of up to 3 meters would reach the southwest coast of Japan around 10:00 am local time (04:00 Romanian time), according to the Japan Meteorological Agency. The warning was issued after the earthquake occurred in the ocean, near the coast.

Earthquakes are frequent in the region, one of the most seismically active areas in the world.

It’s been just four months since a 7.6-magnitude earthquake followed by a tsunami killed 244 people and caused extensive damage in the Noto Peninsula of Ishikawa Prefecture, on the coast of the Sea of ​​Japan.

On March 11, 2011, the northeast coast of Japan was hit by a magnitude 9 earthquake, the strongest earthquake ever recorded in Japan, and a massive tsunami. These events triggered the world’s worst civilian nuclear crisis since the Chernobyl disaster a quarter of a century earlier.