![\"Japan's](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/00239912-614.jpg\"\/)
\nJapan’s Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi addresses the media in Tokyo after the quake<\/p>\n
A powerful 7.5-magnitude earthquake shook northeastern Japan, prompting orders for about 90,000 residents to evacuate and tsunami warnings that hours later were downgraded to advisories.<\/p>\n
The Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) initially said a tsunami as high as 3 metres could hit the country’s northeastern coast after the earthquake struck off the coast at 11.15pm (2.15pm Irish time).<\/p>\n
Tsunami warnings were issued for the prefectures of Hokkaido, Aomori and Iwate, and tsunamis from 20 to 70cm high were observed at several ports, JMA said.<\/p>\n
The JMA downgraded the warnings to advisories, meaning it now sees lower estimated wave heights and less risk of inundation.<\/p>\n
\nJapan’s Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi addresses the media in Tokyo after the quake<\/p>\n
The epicentre of the quake was 80km off the coast of Aomori prefecture, at a depth of 54km, the agency added.<\/p>\n
On Japan’s 1-7 scale of seismic intensity, the tremor registered as an “upper 6” in Hachinohe city, Aomori prefecture – a quake strong enough to make it impossible to keep standing or move without crawling.<\/p>\n
In such tremors, most heavy furniture can collapse and wall tiles and windowpanes are damaged in many buildings.<\/p>\n
There was little information of major damage or casualties from public broadcaster NHK as of 5pm Irish time.<\/p>\n
It cited a hotel employee in Hachinohe as saying a number of people were injured and taken to hospital, but that all were conscious.<\/p>\n
“As of now, I am hearing that there have been seven injuries reported,” Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi told reporters.<\/p>\n
East Japan Railway suspended some services in the area, which was also hit by the massive 9.0-magnitude quake in March 2011.<\/p>\n
“There is a possibility that further powerful and stronger earthquakes could occur over the next several days,” a JMA official said at a briefing.<\/p>\n
Following the tremor, the JMA issued an advisory for a wide region from the northernmost island of Hokkaido down to Chiba prefecture, east of Tokyo, calling on residents to be on alert for the possibility of a powerful earthquake hitting again within a week.<\/p>\n
No irregularities were reported at nuclear power plants in the region run by Tohoku Electric Power and Hokkaido Electric Power, the utilities said.<\/p>\n
Tohoku Electric initially said thousands of households had lost power but later lowered that number to the hundreds.<\/p>\n
Yen weakens briefly<\/p>\n
The yen weakened against major currencies after news of the tremor, before regaining some ground.<\/p>\n
Japan is one of the world’s most earthquake-prone countries, with a tremor occurring at least every five minutes.<\/p>\n
Located in the ‘Ring of Fire’ of volcanoes and oceanic trenches partly encircling the Pacific Basin, Japan accounts for about 20% of the world’s earthquakes of magnitude 6.0 or greater.<\/p>\n
The northeastern region suffered one of the country’s deadliest earthquakes on 11 March 2011, when a 9.0-magnitude tremor struck under the ocean off the coast of the northern city of Sendai.<\/p>\n
It was the most powerful ever recorded in Japan and set off a series of massive tsunami that devastated a wide swathe of the Pacific coastline and killed nearly 20,000 people.<\/p>\n
The 2011 tsunami also damaged the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, leading to a series of explosions and meltdowns in the world’s worst nuclear disaster for 25 years.<\/p>\n
Drawing on lessons from that disaster, when a magnitude 7-level earthquake had struck two days beforehand, the government now issues a one-week “megaquake” advisory whenever a significant earthquake occurs in the region.<\/p>\n
In a similar vein, a megaquake advisory was issued in August last year for the Nankai Trough area in central-southern Japan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A powerful 7.5-magnitude earthquake shook northeastern Japan, prompting orders for about 90,000 residents to evacuate and tsunami warnings…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":181738,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-181737","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181737","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=181737"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181737\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/181738"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=181737"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=181737"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=181737"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}