Emergency.Blog

Update: At Least Eight Dead, 800 Injured in Japanese Quakes

July 17, 2007

UPDATE: Deadly quake rocks Japan, shuts reactors

A Powerful earthquake killed at least seven people and injured nearly 800 in western Japan yesterday, destroying nearly 300 homes, sparking mudslides and setting off a fire at a nuclear plant. In the hardest-hit areas, houses were reduced to rubble and a bridge was nearly cracked in two by the force of the mid-morning earthquake, which had a magnitude of 6.8.

Five elderly people died in hospitals in the worst-hit city, Kashiwazaki, on the Sea of Japan, said officials at the Kashiwazaki Chuo and Kariwa-gun Sogo hospitals. An official at Chuo hospital said two of the dead were women in their 80s. NHK said they had been buried in separate buildings.

Television footage showed flames and smoke shooting out of a nuclear power plant in Kashiwazaki (picture - left), although there was no apparent risk of a radiation leak. Plant officials said the fire erupted in the area that supplies electricity to the plant and that the four reactors automatically shut down following the jolt.

Tokyo Electric Power Company shut down three generators at the nuclear power plant, the world's biggest. "The fire occurred at a transformer, which is not located close to the reactors," said a company official, Yasushi Hasegawa.

The Government set up a crisis centre after the earthquake, which was strong enough to shake skyscrapers in Tokyo, more than 200 kilometres from the epicentre off the coast of Niigata province. This story continues at: http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/deadly-quake-rocks-japan-shuts-reactors/2007/07/16/1184559704102.html