Tsunami as high as 1 meter hits Japan after M8.8 quake off Russia's Kamchatka
Vast areas of Japan's Pacific coast were hit by tsunami waves that at one location exceeded 1 meter on Wednesday, after a powerful magnitude 8.8 earthquake struck off Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula in the morning and triggered a tsunami warning, Kyodo reported.
The warning, which led up to 2 million people in Japan to be either ordered to evacuate or immediately secure their own safety, remains in place for northeastern and northern Japan hours after it was first issued for coastal areas stretching from Hokkaido to Wakayama Prefecture in the west.
Rail, road and air transportation along the coast was disrupted and beaches were closed. The operator of the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant halted the release of treated radioactive wastewater into the Pacific Ocean.
The highest detected tsunami in Japan so far was the 1.3-meter one that arrived at 1:52 p.m. at Kuji Port in Iwate Prefecture, northeastern Japan.
The Japan Meteorological Agency is warning the public to stay away from the coast until the warning is lifted.
"At the least, we are expecting tsunami waves to remain high for around a day," an official told a press conference in the afternoon.
Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba vowed to take all possible measures to ensure the safety of the public, ordering ministries and agencies to mitigate any damage from the tsunami.
Tsunami were observed across 22 of Japan's 47 prefectures from Hokkaido to Okinawa. Hokkaido's Nemuro and Hachijo Island, south of the Japanese capital, saw 80 centimeter-waves and Tokyo's Harumi waterfront district observed a 20-cm wave.
The quake that triggered the tsunami occurred at 8:24 a.m. Japan time around 120 kilometers east-southeast of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky at a depth of about 20 km, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
The temblor could rank as one of the 10 largest quakes since 1900, the USGS data showed. The 2011 quake that devastated northeastern Japan and triggered the Fukushima nuclear disaster by engulfing the nuclear complex with massive tsunami was M9.0.
The Japanese weather agency initially sent a tsunami advisory at 8:37 a.m. but upgraded it about an hour later to a warning after revising the preliminary magnitude of the quake off the Russian Far East to 8.7 from an initially projected 8.0.
The quake registered 2 on Japan's seismic intensity scale of 7 in Hokkaido.
At about 6:30 p.m., the agency downgraded the warning to an advisory except for Hokkaido, Aomori, Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima prefectures.
Earlier it reported that magnitude of the earthquake in Kamchatka, in Russia's Far East, according to various estimates, reached 8.7, which makes it the strongest earthquake since 1952.
