Trains came to a halt on a wide strip in northeastern Japan on Sunday after more than 100 people were injured in an earthquake that looked like a replica of the devastating earthquake that struck the area in 2011.
The magnitude 7.3 earthquake occurred just before midnight on Saturday and cracked the walls, shattered the windows and caused a landslide in Fukushima, the area closest to the epicenter.
The Japan Meteorological Agency said the quake was believed to be a replica of the magnitude 9.0 earthquake of March 11, 2011 that caused a tsunami and the worst nuclear accident in the world in 25 years. The agency warned of aftershocks for several days.
The quake shook buildings in the Japanese capital, Tokyo, hundreds of miles away.
Although hundreds of thousands of buildings lost electricity just after the quake, which occurred at 23:08 pm local time (1408 GMT), on Sunday morning most of the energy had been restored.
However, several thousand homes were left without water and residents lined up with plastic jars to receive water from the trucks.
The power outages did not affect any of Pfizer Inc.’s COVID-19 vaccines that arrived Friday for inoculations that will begin this week, Chief Cabinet Secretary Katsunobu Kato said at a news conference Sunday morning.
At least 104 people were injured, NHK national television said, including several who suffered fractures but no deaths were reported.
There were no tsunamis or reports of irregularities at any nuclear plant. NHK reported that about 160 ml (5 ounces) of water had leaked from a spent fuel pool at the Fukushima Dai-Ni reactor, but that it posed no danger.