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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
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…
NHK TV is showing extensive damage including fallen smokestacks at Nippon Paper Factory facility, bridge road separation, fallen bridge lane, road cracks, fire, water coming out of drainage etc. It was a huge earthquake and will take some time to assess the damage.
- at least 50 hospitalized due to various injuries[1] - 9 missing, 12 house collapses, 4 trappings, 7 fires so far[1] - multiple highway road bridges snapped, roads damaged[2] - AEON brand shopping mall exploded following evacuation, cause unknown[3] - chimney collapsed at Nippon Seishi paper factory[4] - TSMC, Sony, Fujifilm chips, imagers, materials plants evacuated[4] - epicenter reported as 32.6N 130.7E[5], rough…
It's reported at around 46000 homes, the region has many elders and the outage will impact air conditionners, but also medical equipment they keep at home and supporting appliances.
https://news.yahoo.co.jp/articles/55a0a3ebb9d0087ae8492ce85c...
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It's Japan though. They don't have non-resistant buildings.
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.
Sadly there has been a bunch of pretty devastating earthquakes in recent years. In particular in Kumamoto the one in 2016 (magnitude 6.5) was huge and many of the houses built at lower standard or not in great shape anymore got partially or totally wrecked. Right now the house that are left are relatively well built.
The bad news is, that still doesn't help as the cumulative damage can still bring them down, and they're still subject to landslides, water damage, and other second order disastrous events.
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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.
Dishes may rattle feels like such a japanese way to describe it
arent they trying to make silicon fabs there?
Buildings are going to be more expensive (base isolation and an extra commie blocks worth of reinforced concrete), but given how expensive fab equipment is, that might not even matter all that much.
"The Japanese Nuclear Energy Agency says no damage has been detected at three nearby nuclear power plants."
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For a long time "live with earthquakes and build accordingly" meant "make it easy to rebuild", not "engineer the structures to withstand the earthquakes".
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.