KUSHIRO, Japan, 27 September 2003 — A series of strong quakes shook the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido yesterday, collapsing the roof of an airport control tower, setting fire to an oil refinery tank and driving 40,000 people from their homes.
More than 400 people were injured. Officials issued tidal wave warnings as Japan’s Meteorological Agency measured the initial quake at 8 on the Richter scale — stronger than previous killer earthquakes — and warned aftershocks might last 10 days.
“The tremor was so strong that I could not keep standing,” a man told public broadcaster NHK outside his home, its windows shattered by the quake. “Everything was falling over in the house,” another man at a hospital said.
Japan is one of the world’s most seismically active areas, with an earthquake occurring every five minutes. The only death reported was that of a 61-year-old man struck by a car as he picked up broken bottles on the street, officials said. Public broadcaster NHK said 479 people were injured in the area, which is sparsely populated.
Police said two men fishing by a riverbank at the time of the quake were missing, and added that they might have been swept away by tidal waves. The airport in the eastern town of Kushiro had to be closed for three hours after the ceiling of the control tower collapsed. Part of the ceiling of the passenger terminal also fell in, exposing the metal beams.
Elsewhere, roads and buildings cracked, roof tiles fell and gravestones tumbled. A storage tank at an oil refinery caught fire and the plant had to be closed. Quake-generated waves measuring about one-meter (three feet) in height struck the eastern Hokkaido coast, washing away some empty cars, but no major wave damage was reported.
More than 40,000 people had left their homes in response to the tidal wave threat, Kyodo news agency said, but the warnings were lifted last evening. The focus of the first quake — felt in Tokyo about 975 km to the south — was 42 km below the seabed in the Pacific Ocean near the port of Erimo.
A second quake measuring 5.8 on the Richter scale jolted Hokkaido about an hour later, followed by another measuring 7.1. The first quake struck at 4.50 a.m. (1950 GMT) while most people were sleeping. Many said they were shocked by its power. Roads were closed and rail services halted in many areas after one person was injured when a passenger train derailed.
In a bizarre reversal, a dozen fishing boats were washed up onto the quayside by tidal waves while the receding waters left at least 15 cars floating in the bay in Hiroo, one of the towns closest to the epicenter. Officials at Hokkaido Electric Power Co. were quoted by Kyodo as saying that 24,300 homes near Kushiro lost power.
