Strong quake shakes Japan’s hard-hit Noto Peninsula area

A strong earthquake registering an upper 5 on the Japanese seismic intensity scale struck the Noto Peninsula in Ishikawa Prefecture early Monday, the Meteorological Agency said, just over five months after a powerful temblor rocked the area and caused widespread damage.

There was no danger of a tsunami, the agency said.

Monday’s quake, which hit at around 6:30 a.m., registered a magnitude 6.0 about 14 kilometers underground, the agency said in a preliminary report, jolting the hard-hit cities of Wajima and Suzu near the top of the peninsula.

Slight changes to sea level are expected, but there is no concern about damage, the agency said at a news conference early Monday morning.

The agency asked people in the area to remain vigilant for quakes of a similar level for a week, as well as possible rainfall that will increase the risk of falling rocks and landslides. The Noto Peninsula is forecast to experience heavy rain on Monday night.

As of 11 a.m, the Ishikawa Prefectural Government had registered 11 quakes measuring 1 or greater on Japan’s shindo quake scale.

One person was seriously injured in the town of Tsubata while five homes that were already shaky from the Jan. 1 quake have collapsed, the prefectural government said in its meeting.

A screenshot of a map indicating the severity of the earthquake that struck northern Ishikawa Prefecture on Monday morning.
| Japan Meteorological Agency

According to Tokyo Electric Power, no abnormalities have been observed at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa Nuclear Power Plant located in Kashiwazaki City and Kariwa Village in Niigata Prefecture, which experienced a quake with a seismic intensity of 4.

The quake triggered special early warning alerts on smartphones as far away as the Kanto region, and strong tremors were felt in regions including in Niigata, Fukushima and Toyama prefectures.

An initial emergency warning from the Meteorological Agency had overestimated the magnitude of the quake, the epicenter of which was in Toyama Bay, as 7.4. The agency later said it was investigating the reasons that led to the excessive estimate, suggesting that it might have been caused by multiple quakes occurring in the same area within seconds.

The Noto area was severely damaged by a massive earthquake that struck on New Year’s Day. There have been a series of earthquakes in the region since 2020.

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