A 6.1-m quake that hit the coastal city set off fires, caused walls to collapse and cracks in roads
A 6.1-m earthquake hit Osaka, a coastal Japanese city, and nearby areas around 8am on Monday and killed three people while injuring 200 others.
The three victims included a 9-year-old girl and an 80-year-old man, who died in wall collapses and an 85-year-old man, who was crushed under a bookcase in his home.
Breaking: At least 3 dead, 50 injured after magnitude 6.1 earthquake strikes Osaka, Japan. pic.twitter.com/5eDaDMpJIP
— PM Breaking News (@PMBreakingNews) June 18, 2018
Although the quake did not trigger a tsunami, it did devoid the city and nearby Hyogo of power by violently shaking the city. This shaking was owing to the shallow 13-km depth of the quake. The calamity set off fires in several buildings, made walls to crash and caused cracks in roads and water pipes in the city that is to host the G20 summit in 2019.
The Japan Meteorological Agency had originally put the magnitude at 5.9, but later updated it to 6.1. Aftershock warnings have been issued by the country's meteorological agency, which has asked people to stay away from areas that were shaken strongly by the morning quake and keep themselves abreast with the weather updates.
Two years ago, in 2016, Kumamoto was trying to gather itself from a 6.2-magnitude quake when within two days a 7-m earthquake hit the city and killed several people while causing significant damage. “We may have to consider the possibility of even greater earthquakes following, as happened in the quakes in Kumamoto,” Shinji Toda, an earthquake geology professor at Tohoku University, told Kyodo news.
Japan, the world’s most seismically active country, has already seen three earthquakes measured above magnitude 4 recently. The massive 9-m earthquake that hit the country in 2011 triggered a murderous tsunami that killed more than 18,000 people.
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