Japan called the 89 inhabitants of a small island in the south of the country to evacuate after a violent earthquake occurred this Thursday, July 3, the last one in a series of more than 1,000 tremors in less than two weeks in the region.
The residents were invited to evacuate “a school patio on Akuseki Island,” a municipal official told AFP. This call follows an earthquake of magnitude of 5.5 near Akuseki on Thursday. On Wednesday, there had also been a shield of the same magnitude.
Akuseki is part of the Tokara archipelago, south of the Kyushu region, which has been shaken by more than 1,031 earthquakes since June 21. No significant damage has been reported. Seven of the twelve Tokara islands are inhabited, with around 700 inhabitants in total.
No risk of tsunami
“In the areas where the tremors were strong, the risk of collapse of houses and landslides increases,” said Ayataka Ebita, director of the earthquake and tsunamis observation division of the Japanese meteorological agency JMA. “Be attentive to earthquakes of a similar magnitude in the near future,” he added.
According to him, there is no risk of Tsunami after Thursday’s earthquake. A similar period of intense seismic activity had taken place in the Tokara region in September 2023, with 346 registered earthquakes, according to the JMA.
Japan is one of the most active countries in the world at the seismic level, located in the upper part of four main tectonic plates, along the western border of the “Fire belt” of the Pacific. The archipelago, which has around 125 million inhabitants, usually suffers around 1,500 tremors per year, or 18% of earthquakes worldwide.
Concerns about natural disasters
On Tuesday, the Japanese government presented an updated plan to prepare for disasters, believing that there was still much to do to limit the consequences of a possible “mega-seism”, which will probably give up to 300,000 dead in the archipelago.
The authorities are particularly concerned about an important earthquake in the Nankai well, underwater depression of 800 kilometers along the Pacific coast. Such earthquakes occur there every 100 to 200 years, the last one dates from 1946.
In January, a government panel raised the probability of a strong earthquake in this region in the next 30 years. Then, in March, the Government published a new estimate that said earthquake, followed by a tsunami, could be up to 298,000 dead and cause up to 1,680 billion euros in damages.
A manga predicts a disaster on July 5
These government ads intervened on Tuesday at a time when the unfounded fears transmitted on social networks deterred certain foreign tourists from going to Japan this summer: in particular in question, a manga reissued in 2021 that predicts a great disaster on July 5, 2025.
“We know that such stories are circulating, but it is a hoax,” said Ayataka Ebita, of the JMA. “With current science and technology, it is not possible to predict earthquakes,” he added.
In 2011, an earthquake of magnitude 9.0 caused a tsunami that had left 18,500 dead or disappeared and caused a devastating fusion of the fukushima nuclear energy plant reactor.
Source: BFM TV
