An earthquake measuring 7.0 on the Richter scale rocked the southern Japanese island of Kyushu yesterday, killing at least one person and injuring 400 others, officials and press reports said.
The quake, which occurred at 10:53am, also collapsed houses and roads, caused landslides and disrupted land and air traffic.
The government's Meteorological Agency immediately issued tsunami warnings but lifted them one hour later after detecting no significant rise in the tide.
The Kyodo news agency reported about 400 people received treatment at hospitals for injuries. Police confirmed 64 injuries, six of them serious, caused by splinters from shattered window panes and falling objects.
Glass splinters cascaded down from an office building in a business district in Fukuoka, sending passersby rushing away in panic, according to television footage on the Japan Broadcasting Corp.
A 75 year-old woman died after she was crushed by a falling block wall in Fukuoka, a city official said.
"She suffered internal bleeding and a fractured pelvis," the official said by telephone.
Some 10 people were injured on the islet of Genkai at the mouth of Fukuoka Bay as landslides and heavy jolts crushed more than 20 houses, a local official said.
"There was an awful jolt and it rolled for a while, dragging down the chest of drawers and the cupboard in the kitchen at my house," Chizumi Nakamura, secretary of the Genkai community center, said by telephone.
"Children, elderly people and women among the 750 islanders are being evacuated to the city as aftershocks continued," she said, adding no one was reported buried in the landslides.
The epicenter was located in waters off Fukuoka, a major city on the island's northern coast, the meteorological agency said. Its focus was 9km below surface.
Akikichi Matsuzaki, a 50-year-old fisherman on Genkai who was aboard his boat when the quake struck, told Jiji Press, "I heard an enormous bang from the seabed. We felt a shock as if the boat's bottom bumped a big thing."
"The boat swayed greatly. I don't know what happened at all."
A spokesman for the Fukuoka prefectural police headquarters said five hours after the quake that police confirmed 64 injuries, five gas leaks, and damage to four roads and 138 houses. There were also three landslides.
He said a crack, 2cm wide and 100m long, was found on a road near Fukuoka Dome, a seaside baseball park. The surface of the road also buckled out 30cm at one point.
The combined effect of the monsoon, the outer rim of Typhoon Fengshen and a low-pressure system is expected to bring significant rainfall this week to various parts of the nation, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The heaviest rain is expected to occur today and tomorrow, with torrential rain expected in Keelung’s north coast, Yilan and the mountainous regions of Taipei and New Taipei City, the CWA said. Rivers could rise rapidly, and residents should stay away from riverbanks and avoid going to the mountains or engaging in water activities, it said. Scattered showers are expected today in central and
FORCED LABOR: A US court listed three Taiwanese and nine firms based in Taiwan in its indictment, with eight of the companies registered at the same address Nine companies registered in Taiwan, as well as three Taiwanese, on Tuesday were named by the US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) as Specially Designated Nationals (SDNs) as a result of a US federal court indictment. The indictment unsealed at the federal court in Brooklyn, New York, said that Chen Zhi (陳志), a dual Cambodian-British national, is being indicted for fraud conspiracy, money laundering and overseeing Prince Holding Group’s forced-labor scam camps in Cambodia. At its peak, the company allegedly made US$30 million per day, court documents showed. The US government has seized Chen’s noncustodial wallet, which contains
COOPERATION: Taiwan is aligning closely with US strategic objectives on various matters, including China’s rare earths restrictions, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Taiwan could deal with China’s tightened export controls on rare earth metals by turning to “urban mining,” a researcher said yesterday. Rare earth metals, which are used in semiconductors and other electronic components, could be recovered from industrial or electronic waste to reduce reliance on imports, National Cheng Kung University Department of Resources Engineering professor Lee Cheng-han (李政翰) said. Despite their name, rare earth elements are not actually rare — their abundance in the Earth’s crust is relatively high, but they are dispersed, making extraction and refining energy-intensive and environmentally damaging, he said, adding that many countries have opted to
SUPPLY CHAIN: Taiwan’s advantages in the drone industry include rapid production capacity that is independent of Chinese-made parts, the economic ministry said The Executive Yuan yesterday approved plans to invest NT$44.2 billion (US$1.44 billion) into domestic production of uncrewed aerial vehicles over the next six years, bringing Taiwan’s output value to more than NT$40 billion by 2030 and making the nation Asia’s democratic hub for the drone supply chain. The proposed budget has NT$33.8 billion in new allocations and NT$10.43 billion in existing funds, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said. Under the new development program, the public sector would purchase nearly 100,000 drones, of which 50,898 would be for civil and government use, while 48,750 would be for national defense, it said. The Ministry of
RSS