7.1 Earthquake in Japan

tkgally 1 hour ago |

In parts of Kumamoto Prefecture, it registered 7 on the Japanese shindo (seismic intensity) scale, which reflects the amount of ground shaking at a particular location. The shindo is a better indicator of the likely amount of damage than the magnitude is. A shindo of 7 is extremely strong [1].

Ten minutes ago (at around 17:15 p.m. Japan time), NHK was reporting that there were many emergency calls coming in from Uki City, where shindo 7 was recorded, but that the extent of the damage or injuries was not yet known.

There have also been many aftershocks, including some strong ones, and tsunami warnings.

[1] https://www.jma.go.jp/jma/en/Activities/jishintsunami/jishin...

41d 42 minutes ago |

I hope everyone is safe in Kumamoto. In my area, we have been repeatedly warned that a major earthquake called the Nankai Trough is likely to occur in the last few years or decades, so I am very scared of big earthquakes happening in other areas as well.

DiscourseFan 1 hour ago |

Kumamoto is barely finished rebuilding from the last quake, you can still see cracks in structures as you drive down the road. This is really horrible; not to mention the city is already beginning to depopulate as the youth move north to Fukuoka.

kuczmama 1 hour ago |

I'm living in the South of Japan, it was a 4 intensity where I am (about 90km) from the epicenter. Luckily there was only some light shaking and nothing fell over here.

sevenzero 1 hour ago | |

Hope the areas around you were just as lucky, thanks for the update!

canpan 1 hour ago |

Similar strength and location as the 2016 one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Kumamoto_earthquakes

mrwaffle 1 hour ago |

Was looking at webcams here (https://tokyo.fyi) but realized this is further south.

ibaikov 25 minutes ago | |

Found a few online webcams, but I'm not really sure I saw the earthquake. People didn't even seem to stop on the webcam I was watching. Lots of cars on the bridge afterwards though while before it there were much less, idk

vaylian 1 hour ago |

Does anyone know if this also affects South Korea?

unsupp0rted 2 minutes ago | |

Every once in a while (not every year) there are minor earthquakes you can feel in some parts of SK, like Busan: the ground tremors a bit, some shelves wobble... that's the most I've ever noticed.

masklinn 1 hour ago | |

Given it’s barely even felt outside of Kyushu (JMA 3, the dark blue dots, is "dishes may rattle, some people walking outside notice") that seems unlikely.

ChrisRR 1 hour ago | | |

Dishes may rattle feels like such a japanese way to describe it

GreyMolecules 1 hour ago | |

Never felt anything in SK

asp_hornet 1 hour ago | | |

Thank you for this update.

barosl 1 hour ago | |

I was told that some people in Busan, the Korean city nearest to Japan, felt the earthquake and even felt dizzy.

jasmcole 26 minutes ago | | |

I'm in Busan, though I didn't feel anything. (I was on the beach at the time though.)

ButlerianJihad 1 hour ago |

United States Geological Survey https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/map/?extent=21.04224...

Live NHK-WORLD-NEWS feed (English-language commentator) https://www.youtube.com/live/f0lYkdA-Gtw?si=Sc8ZbldZUQESiJQZ

TZubiri 1 hour ago |

7.1 seems to mean non resistant buildings may collapse.

markdown 1 hour ago | |

It's Japan though. They don't have non-resistant buildings.

asutekku 59 minutes ago | | |

Like half of the buildings are non-resistant since they are old and made of wood. IIRC only buildings built after 1991 are guaranteed to be earthquake resistant.

crest 45 minutes ago | | |

One of the reasons Japan uses wood for construction is that combined with their traditional building techniques it results in earthquake resistant buildings.

markdown 25 minutes ago | | |

Earthquakes didn't start in 1991. The Japanese have always had to live with earthquakes and build accordingly.

klausa 23 minutes ago | | |

For a long time "live with earthquakes and build accordingly" meant "make it easy to rebuild", not "engineer the structures to withstand the earthquakes".

egeozcan 12 minutes ago | | |

In Gölcük/İzmit, there was a huge 7.4 earthquake in 99.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_%C4%B0zmit_earthquake

It took around 10 years until the city felt "normal" again (source: a close friend lives there).

My point is, it's never easy to rebuild.

klausa 1 hour ago | | |

There's plenty of old buildings here that are not built up to the latest standards; increasing exponentially the further you get from the core of a big city.

Japan is _very good_ at tearing down old buildings and building better in their place; but it doesn't mean that there are zero old buildings around.

amelius 28 minutes ago | | |

Wouldn't the not so strong old buildings have collapsed during previous quakes?

Cthulhu_ 11 minutes ago | | |

Possibly, and then rebuilt. They rebuild houses every 20, 30 odd years anyway (according to https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2017/nov/16/japan-reusabl...), and temples too https://longnow.org/ideas/long-term-building-in-japan/.

klausa 19 minutes ago | | |

They could have been further away from the epicenter of the previous ones, or the previous ones weren't strong enough to cause that specific structure to collapse, the previous ones might have weakened the structure and this one brought it down, a million different things factor into this.

Earthquakes aren't a perfectly repeatable occurrences you can run a regression test against.

sevenzero 1 hour ago | |

Yea seems pretty bad given its on the higher end of the scale... I might be naive but I hope nobody died

echoangle 14 minutes ago | | |

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Kumamoto_earthquakes

The main shock of this one at 7.0 killed 277 people so sadly I think it’s pretty likely there will be some deaths.

what_hn 1 hour ago |

Shit hope everyone is ok.

minraws 1 hour ago |

Tldr; Seems like major cities didn't get hit by the earthquake at 7 scale.

Hoping for zero casualities.

minraws 1 hour ago | |

Apparently there is a risk for tsunami so Japanese govt has issued a further alert. Hope it isn't anything too bad either

Melatonic 55 minutes ago | | |

Haven't seen anything on the Tsunami global warning list so hopefully it's okay. Earthquake looks centered on land which (to my unofficial understanding) means low risk of Tsunami but of course higher chance of direct damage

1317 34 minutes ago |

don't know what this is doing at the top of HN, if you're there then you know about it already, if you're not then it doesn't affect you in the slightest

Foskya 29 minutes ago | |

It may not affects me personally but i'm still interested in the topic and the discussions it generates.

amelius 27 minutes ago | |

what if you have family there ...

1317 10 minutes ago | | |

you will hear about it from them, no one is going to news.ycombinator.com to find out the latest safety information