A strong earthquake shook the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido early Monday, the U.S. and Japanese weather agencies reported, the latest in a series of powerful tremors that have hit the island nation.
The magnitude 6.2 earthquake struck at 5:23 a.m. (9:23 p.m. GMT Sunday) in the southern region of Hokkaido, at a depth of 83 kilometers (52 miles), the Japan Meteorological Agency reported, revising its preliminary estimate of magnitude 6.1.
No tsunami warning was issued, JMA said, and the U.S. Geological Survey predicted that property damage and threats to life were minimal, given the limited population of the area, about 200 kilometers east of Sapporo.
But “in areas that experienced strong tremors, the risk of rockfalls and landslides increased,” a JMA official told the press.
JMA also warned that the risks of further earthquakes of similar strength in the region in the coming week are high.
A few hours earlier, a magnitude 5.0 earthquake struck the sea a few hundred kilometers south of Hokkaido.
The tremors come less than a week after the JMA warned of an increased risk of a megaquake – of magnitude 8.0 or greater – following Monday’s 7.7 magnitude quake north of Iwate Prefecture.
Six people were reported injured following the earthquake, which shook tall buildings in Tokyo, hundreds of kilometers from the epicenter.
In addition, tsunami waves of 80 centimeters hit a port in Iwate, while small waves also hit elsewhere in northern Japan.
Subsequently, the JMA said, “the probability of another huge earthquake occurring is relatively higher than normal.”
Japan is one of the most seismically active countries in the world, located atop four major tectonic plates along the western edge of the Pacific “Ring of Fire.”
The archipelago, home to around 125 million people, typically experiences around 1,500 tremors each year and is responsible for around 18% of global earthquakes.
Japan is haunted by the memory of a massive 9.0 magnitude undersea earthquake in 2011, which triggered a tsunami that killed or missing about 18,500 people and caused a devastating meltdown at the Fukushima nuclear power plant.
