The death toll from earthquakes in Japan has reached 128 people, reports the Japanese newspaper Tokyo Shimbun. According to the latest data from the Ishikawa Prefectural Government, 195 people are missing. Seismic activity in the country is still high. The number of victims of the earthquakes reaches 560, more than 2,000 people are isolated due to the consequences of the tremors.
The earthquake caused the greatest damage to Ishikawa Prefecture. More than 250 buildings were destroyed there and about 300 burned down. There are still interruptions in water, electricity and fuel in the regions. The number of earthquake victims exceeded 100 for the first time since 2016. Then, as a result of tremors that occurred in the southwest of the country in Kumamoto Prefecture, 273 people died.
In total, more than 1,370 houses in Japan were partially or completely destroyed. 66 thousand households in Ishikawa Prefecture remain without water, and more than 23.9 thousand households remain without electricity. In Ishikawa Prefecture, 357 evacuation points have been opened, the number of evacuees exceeds 30.7 thousand people. There are 5,400 self-defense forces personnel on site.
An earthquake of magnitude 5.3 occurred on January 6 off the western coast of the main Japanese island of Honshu, RIA Novosti reports, citing the German Research Center for Geosciences (GFZ). The tremors were recorded at 05:26 a.m. local time (23:26 a.m. on January 5, Moscow time); the source was located at a depth of 38 kilometers. Information about possible casualties and destruction has not yet been received.
Information also appeared that after a series of powerful earthquakes, power equipment at the Sika nuclear power plant received a number of damages, a significant oil leak was recorded, but there were no safety threats. The pipelines of two transformers used to generate external power in Units 1 and 2 were ruptured, and insulation and cooling oil leaked, causing some damage to the system.
Operator Hokuriku Electric Power Company initially reported that the amount of oil leaking from the second power unit was 3,500 liters, but on Friday the company said that the actual leak was about 10,000 liters. Although most of the leaked oil was collected on Friday, “there are no prospects for restoring the infrastructure yet.”
The Japanese government and the Atomic Energy Committee have created a headquarters for the prevention of accidents at nuclear power plants and are collecting information on the condition of the Shika nuclear power plant. Currently, the first and second reactors of the station are shut down. The headquarters is strengthening monitoring at radiation level checkpoints.
On the first day of 2024, a series of large earthquakes occurred in the Noto Peninsula area of Ishikawa Prefecture on the west coast of Japan, the strongest of which was magnitude 7.6. The earthquakes prompted a tsunami warning for the entire west coast of the country from north to south, followed by a major tsunami warning for the first time since 2011. In a number of places on the coast, the tsunami height was 4.2 meters.