Japan earthquake: Large 5.8 magnitude earthquake strikes off coast of Hokkaido

The tremor hit at 5.40pm BST on Saturday (1.40am on Sunday local time) in Nemuro, a city and port located in the Nemuro Subprefecture on the island of Hokkaido, the USGS said. It is yet not known whether the earthquake caused any damage to people or infrastructure. The epicentre of the quake was 36.6 miles below the surface, the USGS added.  

Neither the USGS-linked Pacific Tsunami Warning Center nor the Japanese Meteorological Agency issued a tsunami warning after the quake. 

Two more earthquakes have been registered in Japan by the USGS in the past 24 hours. 

One, a 4.4 magnitude, struck south-east of the city of Chitose, while the other hit east of the city of Ishinomaki. 

Hokkaido is the second-largest island of Japan, and has been in 2018 theatre of a destructive quake.  

READ MORE: Japan earthquake: MILLIONS in Hokkaido without power – including NUCLEAR PLANT

On September 6 last year, a 6.6 magnitude earthquake shook the Iburi Subprefecture in southern Hokkaido.  

The tremor, which occured at a depth of 21.7 miles, killed 41 people and injured 691 more.  

And more than 53 million people were left without power, as the quake disrupted the Hokkaido Electric Power Company’s coal-fired power plant.

The earthquake cost Japan a total of 367.5bn yen in damages. 

On February 21, another tremor struck the island, this time measuring a 5.7 magnitude, just 6.2 miles north of the epicentre of the previous quake.  

Japan sits on the notorious Ring of Fire, where the majority of volcanic activities and earthquakes take place.  

The Ring is a a 25,000-mile horseshoe-shaped area around the Pacific basin, on which lay also other areas highly at risk of earthquakes, including California. 

Ben van der Pluijm, a scientist at the University of Michigan, said: “The Ring is a huge geological feature and the primary source of major earthquakes and volcanoes in the world.

“For example, Japan is in the Ring of Fire and Japan is basically one giant volcano. 

“That’s why they are so good at predicting when eruptions and earthquakes are going to happen.”

Other Japanese islands have also witnessed devastation caused by earthquake. 

In 2011, an earthquake measuring 9.1 struck off the coast of the Japanese island of Tohaku, resulting in the deaths of almost 16,000. 

This tremor, the most powerful ever recorded, was also the cause of the meltdown of three reactors at the Fukushima Daichi Nuclear Power Plant. 

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source: express.co.uk