In parts of Kumamoto Prefecture, it registered 7 on the Japanese shindo (seismic intensity) scale, which reflects the amount of ground shaking at a particular location. The shindo is a better indicator of the likely amount of damage than the magnitude is. A shindo of 7 is extremely strong [1].
Ten minutes ago (at around 17:15 p.m. Japan time), NHK was reporting that there were many emergency calls coming in from Uki City, where shindo 7 was recorded, but that the extent of the damage or injuries was not yet known.
There have also been many aftershocks, including some strong ones, and tsunami warnings.
I hope everyone is safe in Kumamoto.
In my area, we have been repeatedly warned that a major earthquake called the Nankai Trough is likely to occur in the last few years or decades, so I am very scared of big earthquakes happening in other areas as well.
Kumamoto is barely finished rebuilding from the last quake, you can still see cracks in structures as you drive down the road. This is really horrible; not to mention the city is already beginning to depopulate as the youth move north to Fukuoka.
I'm living in the South of Japan, it was a 4 intensity where I am (about 90km) from the epicenter. Luckily there was only some light shaking and nothing fell over here.
Found a few online webcams, but I'm not really sure I saw the earthquake. People didn't even seem to stop on the webcam I was watching. Lots of cars on the bridge afterwards though while before it there were much less, idk
Given it’s barely even felt outside of Kyushu (JMA 3, the dark blue dots, is "dishes may rattle, some people walking outside notice") that seems unlikely.
Like half of the buildings are non-resistant since they are old and made of wood. IIRC only buildings built after 1991 are guaranteed to be earthquake resistant.
One of the reasons Japan uses wood for construction is that combined with their traditional building techniques it results in earthquake resistant buildings.
For a long time "live with earthquakes and build accordingly" meant "make it easy to rebuild", not "engineer the structures to withstand the earthquakes".
There's plenty of old buildings here that are not built up to the latest standards; increasing exponentially the further you get from the core of a big city.
Japan is _very good_ at tearing down old buildings and building better in their place; but it doesn't mean that there are zero old buildings around.
They could have been further away from the epicenter of the previous ones, or the previous ones weren't strong enough to cause that specific structure to collapse, the previous ones might have weakened the structure and this one brought it down, a million different things factor into this.
Earthquakes aren't a perfectly repeatable occurrences you can run a regression test against.
Haven't seen anything on the Tsunami global warning list so hopefully it's okay. Earthquake looks centered on land which (to my unofficial understanding) means low risk of Tsunami but of course higher chance of direct damage
don't know what this is doing at the top of HN, if you're there then you know about it already, if you're not then it doesn't affect you in the slightest
Ten minutes ago (at around 17:15 p.m. Japan time), NHK was reporting that there were many emergency calls coming in from Uki City, where shindo 7 was recorded, but that the extent of the damage or injuries was not yet known.
There have also been many aftershocks, including some strong ones, and tsunami warnings.
[1] https://www.jma.go.jp/jma/en/Activities/jishintsunami/jishin...
Live NHK-WORLD-NEWS feed (English-language commentator) https://www.youtube.com/live/f0lYkdA-Gtw?si=Sc8ZbldZUQESiJQZ
Japan is _very good_ at tearing down old buildings and building better in their place; but it doesn't mean that there are zero old buildings around.
Earthquakes aren't a perfectly repeatable occurrences you can run a regression test against.
The main shock of this one at 7.0 killed 277 people so sadly I think it’s pretty likely there will be some deaths.
Hoping for zero casualities.