7.1 Earthquake in Japan

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kkrembo 1 day ago 216 commentsRead Article on data.jma.go.jp

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Discussion (216 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews

numpad0•1 day ago

  - at least 50 hospitalized due to various injuries[1]
  - 9 missing, 12 house collapses, 4 trappings, 7 fires so far[1]
  - multiple highway road bridges snapped, roads damaged[2]
  - AEON brand shopping mall exploded following evacuation, cause unknown[3]
  - chimney collapsed at Nippon Seishi paper factory[4]
  - TSMC, Sony, Fujifilm chips, imagers, materials plants evacuated[4]
  - epicenter reported as 32.6N 130.7E[5], roughly 20km/12mi south of previous major earthquake[7], 
    320km/200mi SE from Busan, 650km/400mi from Seoul, 900km/550mi WSW from Tokyo, likewise 900km/550mi
    due east from Shanghai, 1200km/730mi due south to Vladivostok, etc
  - stone wall behind a moat damaged again at Kumamoto castle[8]

1: https://news.web.nhk/newsweb/na/na-k10015188641000 2: https://news.web.nhk/newsweb/na/na-k10015188611000 3: https://news.web.nhk/newsweb/na/na-k10015188721000 4: https://news.web.nhk/newsweb/na/na-k10015188691000 5: https://www.nikkei.com/article/DGXZQOGM287FG0Y6A720C2000000/ 6: https://www.data.jma.go.jp/multi/quake/quake_detail.html?eve... 7: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Kumamoto_earthquakes?uses... 8: https://search.yahoo.co.jp/realtime/search/tweet/20820057608...

makeitdouble•1 day ago

On top of that, one of the toughest part could be the extent of the power outage.

It's reported at around 46000 homes, the region has many elders and the outage will impact air conditionners, but also medical equipment they keep at home and supporting appliances.

https://news.yahoo.co.jp/articles/55a0a3ebb9d0087ae8492ce85c...

latentsea•about 11 hours ago

Call me crazy, but that just doesn't sound all that bad?

zuzululu•about 19 hours ago

> TSMC, Sony, Fujifilm chips, imagers, materials plants evacuated

This makes me think, is it wise to build these places in regions with known earthquake trends.

Almost no earthquakes in Korea and Samsung fabs are also located in the most safe area within Korea.

bobthepanda•about 18 hours ago

Japan itself is involved with a lot of the R&D, the factories are there because of that and because of major buyers also being there. It’s not like we’re going to evacuate the hundred million plus of Japan.

ulfw•about 5 hours ago

And then one would argue is it wise to build these places in regions with an ongoing neighbour dispute and a never officially ended war.

There's no perfect optimisation for everything

parineum•about 16 hours ago

It's a major reason why Arizona was selected for a US site.

goginko•about 23 hours ago

This was my first real earthquake since moving to Kyushu. After it stopped I looked it up, and the first place to post the epicenter and shindo was NERV's twitter...which is named after the org from the anime and has an anime screenshot as its banner (https://x.com/EN_NERV). Apparently it's a real disaster information service, though.

It's been mentioned before but maybe interesting to some (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38835419).

klausa•about 23 hours ago

It started as a Twitter account during the Tohoku 2011 earthquake, and then subsequently became a “real” service; the IP owners for the Eva agreed to let them use it going forward.

reustle•about 22 hours ago

You can keep an eye on this english tracker in the browser too https://earthquakesjapan.com

timr•about 22 hours ago

The Nerv app is quite good. It usually gives real-time alerts faster than the official sources.

You can even have the weird experience of being notified of an earthquake, watching the shockwave move outward from the epicenter, and feeling it as it passes.

bamboozled•about 15 hours ago

Get the app

SomaticPirate•about 22 hours ago

Somewhat unrelated but how did you find the process of moving to Japan (assuming you emigrated there)

klausa•about 10 hours ago

You might get more helpful responses if you ask a more specific question.

tkgally•1 day ago

In parts of Kumamoto Prefecture, it registered 7 on the Japanese shindo (seismic intensity) scale, which reflects the amount of ground shaking at a particular location. The shindo is a better indicator of the likely amount of damage than the magnitude is. A shindo of 7 is extremely strong [1].

Ten minutes ago (at around 17:15 p.m. Japan time), NHK was reporting that there were many emergency calls coming in from Uki City, where shindo 7 was recorded, but that the extent of the damage or injuries was not yet known.

There have also been many aftershocks, including some strong ones, and tsunami warnings.

[1] https://www.jma.go.jp/jma/en/Activities/jishintsunami/jishin...

akg_67•1 day ago

NHK TV is showing extensive damage including fallen smokestacks at Nippon Paper Factory facility, bridge road separation, fallen bridge lane, road cracks, fire, water coming out of drainage etc. It was a huge earthquake and will take some time to assess the damage.

Gravityloss•1 day ago

I at least can see English translated version of NHK here https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/live_tv/

ktallett•1 day ago

There is a collapsed roof of a shopping centre as well in Kumamoto. The Aeon Mall.

kalleboo•1 day ago

The mall had a (most likely gas) explosion, and there are many dead being found inside https://newsdig.tbs.co.jp/articles/-/2833412?display=1

m4rtink•about 23 hours ago

For the record, Aeon Mall is basically a brand - there are many Aeon malls in Japan in various cities.

timr•about 20 hours ago

The second floor of the mall exploded for some reason, and the roof collapse is secondary to that. It seems to have happened after the earthquake and subsequent evacuation. There are videos of people leaving the mall:

https://x.com/yuto4388/status/2082060992377475247/video/1?s=...

vondur•about 21 hours ago

That mall was also damaged in a similar earthquake that happened in 2016.

sph•about 22 hours ago

English link on the shindo scale: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan_Meteorological_Agency_se...

zeeZ•about 6 hours ago

A 7 on the scale from 0 to 7.

kuczmama•1 day ago

I'm living in the South of Japan, it was a 4 intensity where I am (about 90km) from the epicenter. Luckily there was only some light shaking and nothing fell over here.

smb06•about 18 hours ago

Glad to hear it is not too terrible where you are

sevenzero•1 day ago

Hope the areas around you were just as lucky, thanks for the update!

DiscourseFan•1 day ago

Kumamoto is barely finished rebuilding from the last quake, you can still see cracks in structures as you drive down the road. This is really horrible; not to mention the city is already beginning to depopulate as the youth move north to Fukuoka.

walrus01•about 20 hours ago

It's my understanding that small to medium sized cities (and rural areas) depopulating is going on now throughout almost all of Japan. One of the things that really surprised me recently is how low the cost of real estate is for an older, normal middle class home in some sparsely populated areas of Japan.

Apparently the declining population and younger people not wanting to live in their parents' rural countryside home is having a significant effect on property values.

epolanski•22 minutes ago

> One of the things that really surprised me recently is how low the cost of real estate is for an older, normal middle class home in some sparsely populated areas of Japan.

If you're willing to move to depopulating areas houses cost a little kinda everywhere.

In Puglia, Italy, in my in laws village (8'000 people), you can buy a freshly renovated, rather huge house for 50k, and you can likely find livable ones, not renovated at the 10-15k.

In US, in many rural areas you can buy a whole home in good conditions at the 50k mark.

Japan follows the same trend, and yes, I've traveled Japan some, there's plenty of almost-ghost towns nowadays where you can buy real estate for pennies as well.

spike021•about 22 hours ago

I wouldn't let this get in the way of going there though. Kumamoto is a very nice prefecture to see. They will rebuild (again) and it'll continue to be a great place.

DiscourseFan•about 13 hours ago

No I mean of course, I thought Kumamoto was very nice and I especially enjoyed visiting Mt Aso, I was lucky enough to see into the crater and hike around the peaks

spike021•about 10 hours ago

I get it. Same here. Aso is probably one of my favorite places in Kyushu. Also, the michi-no-eki at the bottom is fantastic.

41d•1 day ago

I hope everyone is safe in Kumamoto. In my area, we have been repeatedly warned that a major earthquake called the Nankai Trough is likely to occur in the last few years or decades, so I am very scared of big earthquakes happening in other areas as well.

decimalenough•1 day ago

To be a bit more precise, the Nankai ("South Sea") Trough is a tectonic subduction zone to the south of Japan, roughly the entire length from Izu to Kyushu:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nankai_Trough

And Nankai megathrust earthquakes are those caused by plate movement there:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nankai_megathrust_earthquakes

Statistically major earthquakes occur here every 90-200 years, and the last was in 1946.

koito17•about 21 hours ago

I've heard there's been a lot of redevelopment in Nagoya, in preparation for a possible future earthquake from the Nankai Trough.

Exactly one month ago, there was almost consecutive daily earthquakes in Kantō region. Always a good reminder the whole country lies on seismically active fault lines.

kalleboo•about 19 hours ago

GPS reference data shows the ground has been displaced as much as 84 centimeters https://news.web.nhk/newsweb/na/na-k10015189191000

canpan•1 day ago

Similar strength and location as the 2016 one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Kumamoto_earthquakes

alexissantos•1 day ago

I was camping/bike packing in Kyushu when this happened! I think I was in Miyazaki on the 14th when we felt the first shock. It was the first earthquake I’d experienced. The multi-story hotel we stayed at felt like it was gyrating in a circular fashion.

Then my pal and I were camping by the Utagenka Bridge, east of Kumamoto for the main shock!

shoobiedoo•1 day ago

Fukuoka here (about 100km from Kumamoto) and definitely felt it, so it must have been a real big one in Kumamoto itself.

My friend was driving home from work closer to Miyazaki and didn't feel the quake, but had huge hailstones hitting his car. There's a rapture going on or something

mrwaffle•1 day ago

Was looking at webcams here (https://tokyo.fyi) but realized this is further south.

ibaikov•1 day ago

Found a few online webcams, but I'm not really sure I saw the earthquake. People didn't even seem to stop on the webcam I was watching. Lots of cars on the bridge afterwards though while before it there were much less, idk

ViscountPenguin•1 day ago

Some of the webcams are fake fwiw, I noticed a while ago when there were ads emblassened with old dates on them.

Edit: to be clear, this was random ones on YouTube, not sure about that site.

ibaikov•1 day ago

Woah yes I found those on YouTube, didn’t expect them to be fake. This kind of makes sense but also makes me very disappointed of humanity

vaylian•1 day ago

Does anyone know if this also affects South Korea?

masklinn•1 day ago

Given it’s barely even felt outside of Kyushu (JMA 3, the dark blue dots, is "dishes may rattle, some people walking outside notice") that seems unlikely.

ChrisRR•1 day ago

Dishes may rattle feels like such a japanese way to describe it

Aachen•1 day ago

Indeed! I've never experienced an earthquake strong enough to rattle anything

unsupp0rted•1 day ago

Every once in a while (not every year) there are minor earthquakes you can feel in some parts of SK, like Busan: the ground tremors a bit, some shelves wobble... that's the most I've ever noticed.

GreyMolecules•1 day ago

Never felt anything in SK

asp_hornet•1 day ago

Thank you for this update.

barosl•1 day ago

I was told that some people in Busan, the Korean city nearest to Japan, felt the earthquake and even felt dizzy.

jasmcole•1 day ago

I'm in Busan, though I didn't feel anything. (I was on the beach at the time though.)

kalleboo•about 19 hours ago

Many emergency shelters have not had their building safety confirmed so parking lots are opened to allow people to sleep in their cars, as they are warned to avoid "economy-class syndrome" from sleeping in a tight space. https://news.web.nhk/newsweb/na/na-k10015189161000

inclinq•about 24 hours ago

I'm in Fukuoka. We had shindo 3 here.

My phone alarm went off just before the shaking, but the thing that really surprised me was how strong it felt. I instinctively ran outside.

I hope everyone closer to the epicenter is safe.

inclinq•about 23 hours ago

One thing I've noticed is that people in Fukuoka have stayed calm. I haven't seen panic buying of food or emergency supplies despite being so close to the disaster area.

inclinq•about 22 hours ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixEhLWGJE4M

_joel•1 day ago

https://edition.cnn.com/2026/07/28/asia/japan-earthquake-int... for some Reuters reporting.

clarle•about 24 hours ago

It’s been officially revised down to 6.8, but that’s still a lot.

Hope the residents of Kumamoto Prefecture stay safe and are able to evacuate.

asdaqopqkq•1 day ago

arent they trying to make silicon fabs there?

dopa42365•1 day ago

Not like earthquakes are unheard of in Taiwan or South Korea either.

Buildings are going to be more expensive (base isolation and an extra commie blocks worth of reinforced concrete), but given how expensive fab equipment is, that might not even matter all that much.

kalleboo•1 day ago

Earthquake isolation can be pretty amazing. Here’s a video of a data center during the big 2011 quake. The camera is attached to the outer wall so the point of reference makes the wrong side look like it’s shaking, but you can see the people walking without difficulty during some pretty heavy shaking. A fab will have even better stuff.

https://youtu.be/GXwQSCStRaw

smj-edison•1 day ago

Wow, it's incredible how far civil engineering has come in the past 600 years. To think that we used to have bridges collapse all the time, and buildings crack and collapse, and now we have buildings that can withstand a whole earthquake.

zuzululu•about 19 hours ago

South Korea? Almost nil. It's not known to be a seismological region.

Taiwan, Japan have far more exposure to a long history of earthquakes, tsunamis.

For Taiwan, there is another existential threat man made.

thenthenthen•about 23 hours ago

This was felt in Shanghai, like a truck passing by. The second one in two months?

ButlerianJihad•1 day ago

United States Geological Survey https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/map/?extent=21.04224...

Live NHK-WORLD-NEWS feed (English-language commentator) https://www.youtube.com/live/f0lYkdA-Gtw?si=Sc8ZbldZUQESiJQZ

Jn2G3Np8•1 day ago

The HNK stream can also be viewed at https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/live_tv/ with English dubs. The youtube feed looks to have stopped for now.

TZubiri•1 day ago

7.1 seems to mean non resistant buildings may collapse.

sevenzero•1 day ago

Yea seems pretty bad given its on the higher end of the scale... I might be naive but I hope nobody died

echoangle•1 day ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Kumamoto_earthquakes

The main shock of this one at 7.0 killed 277 people so sadly I think it’s pretty likely there will be some deaths.

markdown•1 day ago

It's Japan though. They don't have non-resistant buildings.

klausa•1 day ago

There's plenty of old buildings here that are not built up to the latest standards; increasing exponentially the further you get from the core of a big city.

Japan is _very good_ at tearing down old buildings and building better in their place; but it doesn't mean that there are zero old buildings around.

amelius•1 day ago

Wouldn't the not so strong old buildings have collapsed during previous quakes?

asutekku•1 day ago

Like half of the buildings are non-resistant since they are old and made of wood. IIRC only buildings built after 1991 are guaranteed to be earthquake resistant.

makeitdouble•1 day ago

Yes, but the situation got a lot better and a lot worse...

Sadly there has been a bunch of pretty devastating earthquakes in recent years. In particular in Kumamoto the one in 2016 (magnitude 6.5) was huge and many of the houses built at lower standard or not in great shape anymore got partially or totally wrecked. Right now the house that are left are relatively well built.

The bad news is, that still doesn't help as the cumulative damage can still bring them down, and they're still subject to landslides, water damage, and other second order disastrous events.

robocat•about 13 hours ago

> and made of wood

Which works great in earthquakes in my experience in Christchurch. Most homes in New Zealand are made of wood.

Christchurch had a 7.1 that was 40km away, that caused some damage (certainly the wooden house I was living in at the time was fine).

Christchurch then had a 6.2 which damaged many concrete and brick buildings because the epicentre was shallow and within the city (6.2 sounds small but if it is close then that really matters). Many house foundations were completely stuffed, but the wooden houses above were often relatively unscathed. I bought a damaged house cheaply with a broken ring foundation: "as-is" or uninsured or insurance payout are the keywords.

Christchurch had maybe 180000 homes, of which about 10,000 were ultimately demolished. But they mostly weren't demolished because the wooden home itself had failed. The majority of demolished homes were in red-zones beside the river or estuary, which the houses could have been repaired but the ground was not good and also future flood risk was the problem. The government, the city, and insurers worked together to remove a lot of homes that had other risks.

markdown•1 day ago

Earthquakes didn't start in 1991. The Japanese have always had to live with earthquakes and build accordingly.

crest•1 day ago

One of the reasons Japan uses wood for construction is that combined with their traditional building techniques it results in earthquake resistant buildings.

rwroks•about 23 hours ago

It is currently summer vacation season in Japan, so we expect there to be many tourists. We hope everyone stays safe.

RS-232•about 12 hours ago

And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not alarmed, for this must take place, but the end is not yet. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be famines and earthquakes in various places. All these are but the beginning of the birth pains.

xiaodai•1 day ago

also earth quake in china.

Razengan•about 17 hours ago

Man, why are the beautiful places of this world so much at constant risk :(

dredmorbius•about 14 hours ago

There's this burning Ring of Fire....

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_of_Fire>

neverenderr•about 22 hours ago

It is very sad

zuzululu•about 19 hours ago

Hope everybody is staying safe in Japan but this will not be the last earthquake, there are many experts pointing this as the beginning with even bigger magnitude coming up.

I'd strongly caution against a Japan trip right now.

dncornholio•1 day ago

For anyone that had their heart skip a beat like me:

"The Japanese Nuclear Energy Agency says no damage has been detected at three nearby nuclear power plants."

JasonHEIN•about 21 hours ago

bless them

reducesuffering•about 20 hours ago

Why does this earthquake, of similar magnitude, get so much more attention compared to the recent Venezuelan earthquake last month that was 100x more devastating? There was no commentary on HN about it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Venezuela_earthquakes

w7•about 20 hours ago

Venezuela's own choices.

https://rsf.org/en/venezuela-censorship-exacerbates-earthqua...

reducesuffering•about 20 hours ago

If anything that should warrant more attention...

w7•about 19 hours ago

The few socialist papers that I've read make the claim that there is nothing to pay attention to, and that the event is "American Propaganda" to try and make Venezuela look weak. The government attempts to control and suppress videos of the event.

Following the event involves trying to see past the state's narrative and take in anything that trickles through. Combine this with the fact that it's likely far easier for most HN readers to send aid to, or know someone in, a friendly nation like Japan. You get the recipe for coverage of Venezuela being muted by comparison.

https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2026/06/venezuela-hum...

sgc•about 19 hours ago

I live in an earthquake prone area and thought Japan was cutting edge in earthquake protection. Beyond the obvious concern for other human beings, I am interested in why there was so much damage from what I would have thought was still a relatively manageable size earthquake for them. I am here trying to learn a lesson that I would not expect to learn from Venezuelan infrastructure and earthquake response.

m0llusk•about 18 hours ago

It is also the timing of building booms. Problems being exposed have triggered regulations and enforcement in Venezuela but that is relatively recent and much inventory was built decades before.

throwitaway222•about 19 hours ago

The speed of videos coming out was a little slower so it lost the HN attention span - but it was definitely a hot topic in many other news places - Reddit, X, etc...

potentdream•about 19 hours ago

thoughts and prayers

minraws•1 day ago

Tldr; Seems like major cities didn't get hit by the earthquake at 7 scale.

Hoping for zero casualities.

minraws•1 day ago

Apparently there is a risk for tsunami so Japanese govt has issued a further alert. Hope it isn't anything too bad either

Melatonic•1 day ago

Haven't seen anything on the Tsunami global warning list so hopefully it's okay. Earthquake looks centered on land which (to my unofficial understanding) means low risk of Tsunami but of course higher chance of direct damage

what_hn•1 day ago

Shit hope everyone is ok.

nimishpatel19•1 day ago

ohh. what was the intensity?

positron26•about 23 hours ago

8 is serious. 9 is Pacific subduction rupture.

7 is not really top news of the day.

People with friends and family exposed don't really appreciate being false-alarmed with 7s and 6s.

smrq•about 22 hours ago

I'm sure everyone in the hospital and with collapsed houses would agree with your assessment that it's not a big deal.

positron26•about 21 hours ago

Okay. Let's make every such instance news?

HN is exaggerating to feel close to the action. It's childish.

There is a trench off of Tokyo that is likely to rupture in our lifetimes, and people who have other people to check on don't care about HN's disaster fantasies.

sedatk•about 20 hours ago

273 people died from a 7.0 earthquake in Kumamoto in 2016.

dgellow•about 22 hours ago

The HN audience decides what is top news of the day, that’s the whole principle this website is based upon