Strong Earthquake Hits Southern Japan

Strong Earthquake Hits Southern Japan

NewsMax.com Wires
Wednesday, April 20, 2005

TOKYO -- A strong earthquake struck southern Japan on Wednesday, damaging hundreds of buildings, triggering landslides and injuring at least 58 people, officials said. There was no threat of a tsunami.

The quake, with a preliminary magnitude of 5.8, hit at 6:11 a.m. and was centered 9 miles below the seabed in the ocean just west of Fukuoka city on Kyushu island, the Central Meteorological Agency said.

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The 58 people hurt - two of them seriously - suffered broken bones and other injuries, but none of them was life-threatening, said Masahiko Esaki, a spokesman for Fukuoka state. Most of the injuries were from objects falling from shelves or from stepping onto broken glass.

The quake damaged some 279 buildings and triggered several landslides in the damage zone, including on the island of Genkai, where several homes already damaged in a powerful March 20 quake were knocked down in Wednesday's temblor.

Officials were still assessing the extent of the damage from the temblor, which was followed by several weaker jolts, said Fukuoka state spokesman Yoshihiro Nakamura. The quake shook large areas of Kyushu and was most strongly felt in Fukuoka city, 560 miles southwest of Tokyo.

Several windows were shattered at a terminal building at Fukuoka Airport, and a wall was cracked at a factory in the town of Chikushi, police said.

Major highways were closed and railway services were temporarily halted, and the runway at Fukuoka Airport was closed to check for damage, NHK said. The airport later reopened, it said.

The agency said Wednesday's tremor was considered an aftershock of the March 20 quake, which killed one person and injured hundreds.