Earthquake in Japan

At least nine people were killed and 765 injured by a magnitude-6.5 earthquake that knocked down houses and buckled roads in Kyushu on Thursday night. The temblor logged a 7, the highest level on the Japanese intensity scale.

Kyushu is in southwestern Japan. The quake struck at 9:26 p.m. The hardest-hit area was Mashiki, on the outskirts of the major city of Kumamoto, and most casualties were in that area. Rescue teams have been interrupted by multiple aftershocks. So far, 44,000 people have been evacuated to 500 shelters. Nuclear power plant officials have reported no problems.



Photo and information from Japan Times

Mashiki earthquake.kmz (719 B)

Let me remind everyone that the NHK WEBSITE is a good source of English language news about Japan, including the April 16, 01:25, quake, which is considered a pre-shock for the April 14 earthquake.

For a wealth of photos and videos about the Kyushu earthquakes, see the link to dailymail.co.uk which krenek provided in the solution to his puzzle on the Aso Great Bridge.



Dramatic as the photos and videos are, the information has become dated. The death toll has now risen to 48, with 2 still missing. Over 6000 homes have been destroyed or seriously damaged, and a record-setting number of aftershocks (over 800 so far, but about 10% of these had magnitude of 4 or higher) continue to make mid-island Kyushu a dangerous place, so large numbers of people are living in designated shelters or in their cars, parked in open spaces. Eleven deaths, mostly of elderly residents, have been attributed to emergency living, some from economy-class syndrome (deep-vein thrombosis) caused by the cramped conditions.



Heavy rains have added to the misery, and increased the danger of earth slides in the quake-weakened volcanic soil. My wife told me the damage to Kumamoto Castle was estimated to be in the neighborhood of $100,000,000. You may have heard that the castle withstood an attack in the Satsuma Rebellion of 1877, but you may not realize that the attacker was Saigō Takamori, the model for the Ken Watanabe character in The Last Samurai. Unlike Watanabe, Takamori dressed in a modern uniform and attacked with cannon and modern rifles.



Several days ago, as the quakes' foci were spreading to the south of Kumamoto City and further north into Oita Ken, it finally occurred to me as I looked at fault line maps on TV, that the entire island of Kyushu was slowly being torn in half by a northeast-southwest movement, and that this movement was along a longer fault that was marked on the surface by the north coast of Shikoku, the Yoshino River valley, the south end of Awaji Island, the Wakayama/Yoshino River, and the Kushida River in Mie Ken. I did an image search for "Japan fault lines" and found the Japan Median Tectonic Line, which continues even farther east and north. I first overlaid the map I found in Wikipedia, and then I traced it as a path, which gives a clearer look at the areas through which it passes. (Click the radio button to see the alternate view.) I never expected to post this little project, but since I supposed more people would be interested in krenek's Daily Mail piece then would be apt to find it hidden in his puzzle solution spoiler, I thought I'd stick my map/path on to a reference to it.

Attachments:

Japan Median Tectonic Line.kmz (4.31 KB)

The body of 22-year-old Hikaru Yamato, the last of the 72 victims of the Kumamoto earthquakes, was positively identified today. Yamato is thought to have been driving near the collapsed bridge near Minami Aso Village. It was discovered earlier this week, in his car, lodged in a highly inaccessible place in the river bed, and required a monumental effort to recover.


NHK World