Powerful 7.5-magnitude earthquake strikes off Japan, tsunami alert issued

What Japan govt said?

Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi has established an emergency task force to investigate potential casualties and damage. The high speed Bullet train services have been halted in the Aomori prefecture.

“Possible damage and casualties are now being looked into,” Takaichi told reporters at her offices in Tokyo.

Big aftershocks may occur in the following days and weeks, an official from Japan’s Meteorological Agency (JMA) said at a separate televised press conference.

Japan’s history with earthquakes

It has been 15 years since a magnitude 9.0 earthquake and tsunami on March 11, 2011, ravaged parts of northern Japan, specifically the Miyagi, Iwate, and Fukushima prefectures. This led to more than 22,000 deaths and forced nearly half a million people to flee their homes, most of them due to tsunami damage.

Some 160,000 people fled their homes in Fukushima because of the radiation spewed from the tsunami-hit Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. About 26,000 of them haven’t returned because they resettled elsewhere, their hometowns remain off-limits or they have lingering concerns about radiation.

Despite the history of the Fukushima disaster, no abnormalities have been detected in the affected regions. Additionally, no nuclear plants are currently operational in the immediate impact zone of this tremor.