Japan PM Scraps Overseas Trip After ‘Megaquake’ Advisory

AFP/APP

Tokyo: Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida on Friday canceled a trip to Central Asia after earthquake scientists warned the country should prepare for a possible “megaquake.”

The Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) issued the advisory on Thursday following a tremor of magnitude 7.1 in the south that injured eight people. Kishida was scheduled to travel to Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Mongolia and attend a regional summit.

“As the prime minister with the highest responsibility for crisis management, I decided I should stay in Japan for at least a week,” Kishida told reporters. He acknowledged that the public must be feeling “very anxious” after the JMA issued its first advisory under a new system developed following the major magnitude 9.0 earthquake in 2011, which led to a deadly tsunami and nuclear disaster.

The JMA noted that “the likelihood of a new major earthquake is higher than normal, but this is not an indication that a major earthquake will definitely occur.”

Thursday’s earthquake, which struck off the southern island of Kyushu, caused traffic lights and cars to shake and dishes to fall off shelves. However, no serious damage was reported. The Fire and Disaster Management Agency reported that eight people were injured, including several hit by falling objects.

Japan, which sits on top of four major tectonic plates, experiences about 1,500 quakes annually, most of them minor. Even with larger tremors, the impact is generally contained due to advanced building techniques and well-practiced emergency procedures.

The government has previously stated that a megaquake has a roughly 70 percent probability of striking within the next 30 years, potentially affecting a large swath of Japan’s Pacific coastline and threatening an estimated 300,000 lives in the worst-case scenario.

‘Risk Elevated, But Low’

“While earthquake prediction is impossible, the occurrence of one earthquake usually does raise the likelihood of another,” experts from Earthquake Insights said. However, they added that even when the risk of a second earthquake is elevated, it is “still always low.”

On January 1, a 7.6-magnitude earthquake and powerful aftershocks hit the Noto Peninsula on the Sea of Japan coast, killing at least 318 people, toppling buildings, and disrupting roads.

In 2011, a massive 9.0-magnitude undersea quake off northeastern Japan triggered a tsunami that resulted in around 18,500 deaths or missing persons. It also caused three reactors at the Fukushima nuclear plant to melt down, marking Japan’s worst post-war disaster and the most serious nuclear accident since Chernobyl.

A future megaquake could originate from the vast Nankai Trough off eastern Japan, which has previously experienced major jolts, often in pairs, with magnitudes of eight and nine. This includes the 1707 earthquake, the largest recorded until 2011, as well as events in 1854, 1944, and 1946.