The tsunami unleashed by the massive 8.8 earthquake off Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula was not as bad as feared when it reached Japan on Wednesday morning, but it was still a force to be reckoned with, causing several injuries along Japan’s lightly populated east coast.
The Kamchatka quake was one of the strongest ever recorded. In the recent history of the region, only the 2011 quake off the coast of Japan was stronger – and that one unleashed a tsunami that killed over 15,000 people.
Tsunami warnings were issued on Tuesday night that reached as far as the west coast of the United States. In Japan, some 2 million people were told to seek shelter on high ground.
When the tsunami reached Japan’s northern island of Hokkaido early Wednesday morning, it was only about two feet deep – a fraction of the worst-case scenario. The epicenter of the mighty earthquake was less than a thousand miles from Hokkaido, so the possibility of severe flooding in low-lying coastal areas had to be taken seriously.
Local airports were shut down after sunrise on Wednesday morning, and Prime Minister Ishiba Shigeru urged Hokkaido residents to heed tsunami warnings and “evacuate immediately to higher ground, or a designated evacuation building.”
According to the Japanese Ministry of Internal Affairs, evacuation orders were issued to 2,011,038 people across 19 prefectures. Most of those people seem to have obeyed the order. Some of the evacuees told reporters they were haunted by memories of the swift death and destruction brought by the 2011 earthquake and tsunami.
“When the emergency siren went off, it brought back memories of that day. I still carry the trauma with me,” said a 79-year-old survivor of the 2011 disaster who sought shelter in a community center in Miyagi prefecture.
Prime Minister Ishiba said on Wednesday morning there were no confirmed reports of severe damage from the tsunami, including at the location with the highest level of tsunami anxiety in Japan, the Fukushima nuclear reactor. Roughly 4,000 workers were evacuated from the plant as a precaution, but managers said there were no signs of any “abnormalities” from the tsunami.
One confirmed fatality was recorded on Wednesday, but it was not actually caused by the tsunami: a 58-year-old woman was killed while attempting to move her vehicle to higher ground.
Police said they found messages on the woman’s cell phone that showed her telling her family she wanted to “move the car to a higher evacuation point.” She apparently veered off the road, tumbled down a 60-foot cliff, and suffered fatal head injuries.
Most of Japan’s tsunami warnings were downgraded to advisories by Wednesday evening, local time, but officials said residents in coastal areas should still exercise caution. The Japan Meteorological Agency cautioned that tsunami conditions could persist for at least another day, and waves higher than those observed on Wednesday morning were possible.
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