Small tsunami waves hit Japan after Pacific quake
Source: Reuters
(Updates with Japanese warnings cancelled, quake magnitude) By Elaine Lies TOKYO, Jan 13 (Reuters) - Small tsunami waves hit northern and eastern Japan on Saturday after a powerful earthquake in the Pacific prompted tsunami warnings in Japan, Russia and Alaska. Watches were also mounted in Guam, Taiwan, the Philippines and Hawaii, island territories nervous of a repeat of the disaster two years ago when a quake in the Indian Ocean created giant waves that killed 230,000. A 40-cm (16-inch) wave was reported at Chichijima in the Ogasawara islands, some 1,200 km (750 miles) south of Tokyo, and several smaller waves on Hokkaido and northern Japan, but there were no reports of injuries and no immediate reports of damage. Evacuation advisories had been issued for tens of thousands of households in Japan but all warnings were cancelled at 10:10 p.m. (1310 GMT). The USGS (U.S. Geological Survey) put the quake magnitude at 8.2, a "great" tremor, and said its epicentre was in the northern Pacific, 525 km (325 miles) east northeast of Kurilsk, Kurile Islands, and 1,710 km (1,065 miles) northeast of Tokyo. The same area was struck by a powerful quake in November, prompting evacuations and tsunami warnings, but then too only small waves reached Japan. An official in Russia's Emergencies Ministry told Reuters the threat of a tsunami had passed. "Half-past eight, nine o' clock Moscow time (0530-0600 GMT) was the approximate time the threat of a tsunami was due to appear. That time passed, and the threat did not materialise. Everything is normal," the official said. RESIDENTS EVACUATED Japan's Meteorological Agency had said a tsunami as tall as a metre (yard) could hit parts of Hokkaido and smaller waves were likely to hit a wide area of coast, from Hokkaido to Wakayama prefecture on Japan's largest main island of Honshu. Hokkaido officials urged residents to move to higher ground and fire trucks made the rounds of coastal areas warning about the tsunami threat. There were only moderate tremors in Hokkaido and no immediate reports of casualties. "We have cars going around the city telling people to evacuate," Takahiro Yamamoto, an official with the Monbetsu city government, told NHK. Television footage showed a worried resident of Kushiro studying the coast with binoculars from an evacuation centre. "I'm scared to return home," said a woman cradling a child. Authorities in the Philippines said they issued a tsunami alert "level one", warning residents on the northern and eastern coasts to wait for further information and possible evacuation. Officials in Taiwan said they would continue to monitor for several hours but did not expect anything to happen. A tsunami, Japanese for "harbour wave," travels at dizzying speed in the open ocean and, when it approaches shallow water along a coast, slows and swells. In an inlet, it can rise to a towering height very quickly. In 1993, a tsunami caused by a 7.8 magnitude earthquake killed about 200 people on the island of Okushiri, off Hokkaido's southwestern coast. (Additional reporting by Teruaki Ueno, Chikafumi Hodo and Linda Sieg in Tokyo, Rosemarie Francisco in Manila, Donna Chiacu and Yereth Rosen in the United States, and Moscow bureau)
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