TOKYO — A magnitude 7.1 earthquake rocked Japan’s southwestern prefecture of Kumamoto on Tuesday afternoon, registering the maximum 7 on the Japanese seismic intensity scale.<\/p>\n
The powerful quake struck at 4:35 p.m. at a shallow depth of 10 kilometers and was followed by a series of aftershocks of up to magnitude 4.5, according to the Japan Meteorological Agency. The reading of 7 on Japan’s seismic intensity range indicates a level that can cause low-seismic-resistance buildings to tilt or fall.<\/p>\n
The prefecture is home to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.’s production hub on the island of Kyushu. A spokesperson for the major chipmaker told Kyodo News that it is assessing the situation. The seismic intensity was 5 in the city of Kikuyo, the site of TSMC’s facility.<\/p>\n
The JMA issued a tsunami warning for Ariake and Yatsushiro seas, off Kumamoto, Fukuoka, Saga and Nagasaki prefectures.<\/p>\n
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi said in a post on X that the government had convened an emergency team and was looking to assess the damage along with emergency disaster response measures, while urging residents to stay away from the coast and remain alert for further strong quakes.<\/p>\n
Kumamoto was devastated by a series of major earthquakes in 2016 that left nearly 300 people dead and caused extensive damage to infrastructure.<\/p>\n
Chief Cabinet Secretary Minoru Kihara told reporters in Tokyo that nuclear power stations in the area were not affected by the earthquake.<\/p>\n
The runway at Aso Kumamoto Airport, located in the prefecture, was closed as of 4:40 PM due to the earthquake. The Airport operates domestic flights to cities like Osaka and Tokyo, as well as international flights to Taiwan and South Korea.<\/p>\n
JR Kyushu announced that it has suspended service on all its lines, including the Shinkansen bullet trains and local lines.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TOKYO — A magnitude 7.1 earthquake rocked Japan’s southwestern prefecture of Kumamoto on Tuesday afternoon, registering the maximum…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":65102,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42209,8,410,3903,7962,42210,4226,32595,52],"class_list":["post-65101","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tokyo","tag-42209","tag-japan","tag-japans","tag-kumamoto","tag-magnitude","tag-prefecture","tag-quake","tag-rocks","tag-tokyo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65101","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65101"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65101\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65102"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}