Homes remain without power after 7.3 quake off Fukushima

Households remained without power and companies worked to assess damages the morning after a powerful quake with a magnitude of 7.3 hit the northeast coast Fukushima prefecture, Japan, on Wednesday.

Some 36,400 households in areas hard-hit by the tremor and serviced by Tohoku Electric Company were still without power on Thursday morning. The company said it expected power to return to most affected areas on Thursday, but could not rule out delays to a return to normality in other areas.

Two people were confirmed dead and more than 100 people are injured, public broadcaster NHK said. Authorities cancelled an earlier tsunami warning.

Manufacturers were also trying to gauge the damage of the quake, which hit off the coast of Fukushima prefecture at a depth of 60 km (37 miles).

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The quake was felt in Tokyo, some 275km away, where the shaking of buildings was long and pronounced. Hundreds of thousands of homes in the capital were plunged into darkness for an hour or more, although power was fully restored later.

Just before midnight the quake hit off the coast of Fukushima prefecture at a depth of 60km, the Japan Meteorological Agency said. It sparked memories of a devastating earthquake and tsunami in March 2011, a week after that disaster's 11th anniversary.

There were no abnormalities at nuclear power plants, prime minister Fumio Kishida told reporters. The 2011 disaster triggered a meltdown at the Daiichi nuclear plant in Fukushima that Japan is still coming to grips with.

Authorities earlier said a fire alarm had been triggered at a turbine building at the crippled plant.

Utility Tokyo Electric Power Company said that initially around 2 million households lost power on Wednesday, including 700,000 in the capital.

Waves

Authorities had issued a tsunami warning for the region of as high as 1 metre, with waves of 20cm reported in some places. Residents in at least one coastal area were told to evacuate.

Strong quakes in Japan can disrupt manufacturing, particularly of sensitive electronic components such as semiconductors, that are made using precision machinery.

The 2011 quake halted production for three months at a factory owned by Renesas Electronics Corp, which makes nearly a third of all microcontroller chips used in cars. A fire at the facility last year exacerbated a chip shortage that has forced auto companies to curb output.

Sitting on the boundary of several tectonic plates, Japan experiences about a fifth of the world’s earthquakes of magnitude 6 or greater. – Reuters