Japan downgrades major tsunami warning after earthquakes – BBC News

Japan downgrades major tsunami warning after earthquakes – BBC News

I’m Lauren Taylor we begin in Japan where a powerful earthquake and several strong aftershocks have hit the North Coast of the main island of honu destroying buildings and starting fires in the last half hour a major tsunami warning telling people in the coastal Noto area to move to Higher Ground was

Downgraded tsunami warnings have also been issued in South and North Korea and Far East Russia Japan’s meteorological agency says the Quake had a magnitude of 7.6 it struck just after 4 M local time with its epicenter in the Ishikawa region close to the town of anamizu several buildings are reported to have

Collapsed in the nearby town of suzu this C CCTV footage appears to show two coming down that you can see clouds of dust forming above the wreckage at the top left and right of the screen and the roof on the building in the foreground cracking apart well there are reports of people

Trapped in the rubble of collapsed houses some tsunami wav waves of just over a meter have reached the coastline these pictures were filmed in nearby nigata there had been fears of waves up to 5 MERS in places and this video shows the moment the Tremor happened inside a supermarket

A quake has disrupted flights and rail services and there are reports that some major highways have been closed more than 36,000 homes have also lost power supplies but the agency which administers Japan’s nuclear power plant says they have not been affected or some images are now emerging

Of the damage caused by the Quake these buildings in wajima give an idea of how violent the Tremor was you can see the rubble of what appears to be a collapsed shop at the end of the street and these pictures show how dozens of roof tiles were dislodged by

The Quake with the frames of some of the homes also badly damaged one tourist who’s on a snowboarding trip near nigata described what the earthquake felt like pretty massive if you ask me uh so the whole room was shaking the TV was shaking I had to keep um everything um

On the table uh yeah uh I do I did felt safe in my room though but but everything else was shaking our Asia correspondent Rupert Wingfield Hayes is following the story and Rupert a bit of a downgrade to the warning yes uh to the relief of everybody I think in Japan particularly

Along that Coast it looks now as if the major threat of a 5 meter tsunami has passed local authorities there say they have downgraded the tsunami warning from a serious tsunami to a still a warning but of a of a a lower scale threat to

The coast uh and we are now 5 hours since the earthquake the initial earthquake struck there have been several aftershocks uh several of them quite large but as that time has gone on the the threat uh has begun begun to wne and I’m not surprised now that they have

Now downgraded the threat it appears that a big tsunami is not likely to to hit that Coast meantime there quite a bit of damage are people being told still to stay away from their homes if they have evacuated well it’s now well into the night uh in Japan and people who have

Evacuated to uh evacuation centers which you find in every town in Japan uh on High Ground there are strengthened buildings community centers or schools that are used as evacu evacuation centers during times of disaster whether they’re earthquake typhoon things like that so people will have moved to those

Places and I would expect many of them to stay there through the night uh until the damage to their uh properties and to their towns has been fully assessed and then they will probably return begin to return home but as you say there has been significant damage we’ve seen

Pictures from one town in the north of the Noto peninsula where a large fire broke out it is out of control and it appears to be burning a whole neighborhood it appears that fire Services can’t get through to put it out at the moment we’ve also seen many older

Buildings have collapsed in rural areas this is quite a remote uh area of Japan many fishing communities along that Coast with older buildings and it will be those that will be worst affected also many roads have been broken up with huge cracks and and and Rippling of the

Roads Bridges and a lot of infrastructure has been badly damaged and and I would expect in the coming hours to hear of more injuries and perhaps fatalities from This Disaster uh but but as I said at the beginning the good news is uh it looks like the danger

From the a large tsunami has now passed and I suppose in the meantime though people as you mentioned relieve because they would still have memories of the Fukushima disaster which was triggered by that earthquake back in 2011 yes I mean I spent 10 years living in Japan after the earthquake in 2011

And it it affected the country deeply uh there was a great deal of collective trauma and every time an earthquake HIIT in Tokyo for example people would talk about oh it reminded me o of the 11th of March 2011 everybody knows that date it’s burned into their memories and the

Tsunami that hit after that disaster uh which took 18 a half thousand lives and destroyed a huge sthe of the northeast coast of Japan is still very fresh in people’s memories it’s only 13 years ago and I think today watching the pictures coming in from Ishikawa many people will

Have been reminded of that will have been very very concerned about the people living up there rert Wingfield Hayes with the latest there from Tai thank you very much indeed

Japan has downgraded its tsunami warning after a 7.6 magnitude earthquake struck the central region.

The major warning – the first in Japan since the 2011 earthquake – was issued for the Noto area.

Tsunami warnings also remain in place for the neighbouring Niigata and Toyama prefectures.

A succession of more than 30 earthquakes have struck central Japan since about 16:00 local time (07:00 GMT), with more expected to follow.

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