Natural phenomena have been wreaking havoc in East Asia. This morning a magnitude 6.5 earthquake ripped from the subducting Philippine plate at a depth of 23 kilometers in the middle of the Suruga bay off the east coast of Japan (BBC). Besides the immediate damage – at least 100 people were injured – there were two main concerns.
The first was that it would impact the nearby Hamaoka nuclear facility. But this worry was put to rest by reports that an early warning system had automatically stopped operations. So far no damage and no leakage of any radioactive material have been reported, a sharp contrast to the fear and frenzy resulting from an earthquake near a nuclear facility on the opposite coast two years ago.
The second fear was that this quake would trigger the magnitude 8 Tokai earthquake that scientists say will occur with a roughly 80% probability within the next 30 years. A committee of the Japan Meteorological Administration met today and judged from the pattern of crustal deformation that it would not initiate the Tokai earthquake.
The quake set off the earthquake warning system in the greater Tokyo area, and also set my phone squawking its earthquake alert at least 5 seconds before the trembling started (causing me much confusion, because I didn’t know my phone had that function and I usually only hear the calming instrumental version of Captain and Tennille’s Do that to me one more time, which for some reason is the outdated factory preset for incoming calls on my otherwise ultramodern Sony Ericsson W64S)
There was another magnitude 6.9 earthquake on Sunday night, also off the Pacific coast of Japan. But at a depth of 340 kilometers, it caused widespread shaking but little damage.
Japan was also hit on Sunday by a typhoon, Etau, that killed at least 14 and left 17 missing in landslides, mostly in western Hyogo province. Typhoon Morakot has been even deadlier, causing landslides and flooding that claimed at least 50 lives in the Phillipines and Taiwan, where it buried an entire village leaving hundreds still missing before moving on to mainland China (Bloomberg).
Posted on behalf of David Cyranoski