Japanese authorities urged the 89 residents of a small southern island to evacuate after a strong earthquake on Thursday, the latest of more than 1,000 recent jolts to hit the area.<\/p>\n
Residents were urged to evacuate to “a school playground in Akuseki Island”, a municipal official told AFP.<\/p>\n
Akuseki is part of the Tokara island chain south of Kyushu region, which has been rattled by 1,031 quakes since June 21.<\/p>\n
No major damage has been reported.<\/p>\n
After all residents were confirmed safe, the evacuation instruction was later lifted.<\/p>\n
On Thursday, a 5.5 magnitude quake struck near Akuseki. The previous day a jolt of the same size was also recorded.<\/p>\n
Seven of the 12 remote Tokara Islands are inhabited, with around 700 residents in total.<\/p>\n
There was no tsunami risk from Thursday’s quake, according to Ayataka Ebita, director of the earthquake and tsunami observation division of the Japan Meteorological Agency.<\/p>\n
“In areas where the tremors were strong, there is an increased risk of collapsed houses and landslides,” he told reporters.<\/p>\n
“Please be aware of earthquakes of similar magnitude for the foreseeable future,” he said.<\/p>\n
A similar period of intense seismic activity in the Tokara area occurred in September 2023, when 346 earthquakes were recorded, according to the JMA.<\/p>\n
Japan is one of the world’s most seismically active countries, sitting on top of four major tectonic plates along the western edge of the Pacific “Ring of Fire”.<\/p>\n
The archipelago, home to around 125 million people, typically experiences around 1,500 jolts every year and accounts for about 18 percent of the world’s earthquakes.<\/p>\n
In 2011, a magnitude-9.0 quake triggered a tsunami that left 18,500 people dead or missing and caused a devastating meltdown at the Fukushima nuclear plant.<\/p>\n
Quakes are extremely hard to predict, but in January a government panel marginally increased the probability of a major jolt in the Nankai Trough off Japan in the next 30 years to 75-82 percent.<\/p>\n
The government then released a new estimate in March saying that such a “megaquake” and subsequent tsunami could cause as many as 298,000 deaths and damages of up to $2 trillion.<\/p>\n
This week, the government released a report saying much more needed to be done to prepare for such a megaquake.<\/p>\n
Some foreign tourists have held off coming to Japan due to unfounded fears fanned by social media that a major quake is imminent.<\/p>\n
Causing particular concern is a manga comic reissued in 2021 which predicted a major disaster on July 5, 2025.<\/p>\n
“We are aware that such tales are circulating, but that is a hoax,” Ebita at the JMA said.<\/p>\n
“With today’s science and technology, it is not possible to predict earthquakes.”<\/p>\n
tmo-stu\/mtp<\/p>\n
\u00a9 Agence France-Presse<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Japanese authorities urged the 89 residents of a small southern island to evacuate after a strong earthquake on Thursday, the latest of more than 1,000 recent jolts to hit the area. Residents were urged to evacuate to “a school playground in Akuseki Island”, a municipal official told AFP. Akuseki is part of the Tokara island […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1762,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sitemap_exclude":false,"_sitemap_priority":"","_sitemap_frequency":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"subtitle":"","format":"standard","override":[{"template":"7","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"left-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"topbottom","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_share_counter":"1","show_view_counter":"1","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_category":"1","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_prev_next_post":"1","show_popup_post":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_author_box":"1","show_post_related":"0","show_inline_post_related":"0"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0"},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"jnews_post_split":{"post_split":[{"template":"1","tag":"h2","numbering":"asc","mode":"normal","first":"0","enable_toc":"0","toc_type":"normal"}]},"footnotes":""},"categories":[80],"tags":[473,535,534],"class_list":["post-1761","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international","tag-japan","tag-kyushu","tag-quake"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1761","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1761"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1761\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1762"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1761"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1761"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1761"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}