Ten minutes ago (at around 17:15 p.m. Japan time), NHK was reporting that there were many emergency calls coming in from Uki City, where shindo 7 was recorded, but that the extent of the damage or injuries was not yet known.
There have also been many aftershocks, including some strong ones, and tsunami warnings.
[1] https://www.jma.go.jp/jma/en/Activities/jishintsunami/jishin...
If the internet searches are to be believed, that is indeed sadly likely to be the cause.
The internet suggests the explosion happened on the second floor of the mall where a large food court is located.
- at least 50 hospitalized due to various injuries[1]
- 9 missing, 12 house collapses, 4 trappings, 7 fires so far[1]
- multiple highway road bridges snapped, roads damaged[2]
- AEON brand shopping mall exploded following evacuation, cause unknown[3]
- chimney collapsed at Nippon Seishi paper factory[4]
- TSMC, Sony, Fujifilm chips, imagers, materials plants evacuated[4]
- epicenter reported as 32.6N 130.7E[5], roughly 20km/12mi south of previous major earthquake[7],
320km/200mi SE from Busan, 650km/400mi from Seoul, 900km/550mi WSW from Tokyo, likewise 900km/550mi
due east from Shanghai, 1200km/730mi due south to Vladivostok, etc
- stone wall behind a moat damaged again at Kumamoto castle[8]
It's reported at around 46000 homes, the region has many elders and the outage will impact air conditionners, but also medical equipment they keep at home and supporting appliances.
https://news.yahoo.co.jp/articles/55a0a3ebb9d0087ae8492ce85c...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nankai_Trough
And Nankai megathrust earthquakes are those caused by plate movement there:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nankai_megathrust_earthquakes
Statistically major earthquakes occur here every 90-200 years, and the last was in 1946.
Then my pal and I were camping by the Utagenka Bridge, east of Kumamoto for the main shock!
My phone alarm went off just before the shaking, but the thing that really surprised me was how strong it felt. I instinctively ran outside.
I hope everyone closer to the epicenter is safe.
Hope the residents of Kumamoto Prefecture stay safe and are able to evacuate.
My friend was driving home from work closer to Miyazaki and didn't feel the quake, but had huge hailstones hitting his car. There's a rapture going on or something
Edit: to be clear, this was random ones on YouTube, not sure about that site.
Buildings are going to be more expensive (base isolation and an extra commie blocks worth of reinforced concrete), but given how expensive fab equipment is, that might not even matter all that much.
"The Japanese Nuclear Energy Agency says no damage has been detected at three nearby nuclear power plants."
The main shock of this one at 7.0 killed 277 people so sadly I think it’s pretty likely there will be some deaths.
Japan is _very good_ at tearing down old buildings and building better in their place; but it doesn't mean that there are zero old buildings around.
Earthquakes aren't a perfectly repeatable occurrences you can run a regression test against.
Sadly there has been a bunch of pretty devastating earthquakes in recent years. In particular in Kumamoto the one in 2016 (magnitude 6.5) was huge and many of the houses built at lower standard or not in great shape anymore got partially or totally wrecked. Right now the house that are left are relatively well built.
The bad news is, that still doesn't help as the cumulative damage can still bring them down, and they're still subject to landslides, water damage, and other second order disastrous events.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_%C4%B0zmit_earthquake
It took around 10 years until the city felt "normal" again (source: a close friend lives there).
My point is, it's never easy to rebuild.
Live NHK-WORLD-NEWS feed (English-language commentator) https://www.youtube.com/live/f0lYkdA-Gtw?si=Sc8ZbldZUQESiJQZ
Hoping for zero casualities.
We had:
The Pride attack in Germany
The knfie stabbing in Paris
and now this