Fear of mega earthquake Japan's prime minister cancels trip abroad at short notice
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida announced on Friday that he would not be traveling to Central Asia. Seismologists had previously warned that Japan needed to prepare for a possible mega-quake.
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- Japan is one of the most earthquake-prone countries in the world. Now the earth is shaking again in the southwest. According to experts, the risk of a mega-earthquake is real.
- The fear is apparently so great that Prime Minister Fumio Kishida decided to cancel a trip abroad to Central Asia at short notice on Friday.
- According to the Japanese government, there is a 70 to 80 percent probability of a magnitude 8 to 9 quake in the next 30 years.
- According to estimates, over 300,000 people could lose their lives.
"As Prime Minister, who has the highest responsibility for crisis management, I have decided to stay in Japan for at least a week," Kishida told the press.
Following a magnitude 7.1 earthquake in southwest Japan, the Tokyo Meteorological Agency has warned for the first time of a higher risk of a megaquake on the island nation's Pacific coast.
"The probability of another strong earthquake is higher than in normal times, but this does not mean that an earthquake is certain to occur," the agency announced on Friday. People have been urged to prepare for all eventualities.
Kishida, who according to theGuardianis struggling with low approval ratings and whose chances in the ruling party's presidential election next month are being eyed critically, announced his decision at a media conference on Friday.
According to the Kyodo news agency, he would have attended a summit with the heads of state and government of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan in the Kazakh capital Astana on Friday evening and traveled to Ulaanbaatar on Monday to meet the Mongolian president.
Hundreds of thousands dead
According to estimates by the Japanese government, there is a 70 to 80 percent probability that an earthquake of magnitude 8 to 9 will occur along the Nankai Trench within the next 30 years. According to estimates, up to 323,000 people could lose their lives.
This is a deep-sea trench that extends off the coast of the Asian economic powerhouse for around 900 kilometers from Shizuoka Prefecture on the main island of Honshu - where the capital Tokyo is located - to Kyushu.
The classification of an increased risk was issued following a tremor off Kyushu in the southwest, one of Japan's four main islands. According to Japanese media, several people were injured and there were also reports of damage to buildings and roads. However, there were no irregularities at nuclear power plants in the region, according to reports.
Japan hardest hit by earthquake
The island nation of Japan is one of the countries most threatened by earthquakes in the world. The earth has repeatedly shaken in the Nankai Trench region, most recently in 1946. In a worst-case scenario, Tokyo and other major cities with millions of inhabitants would also be affected.
Following the triple disaster in March 2011, when a magnitude 9 quake triggered a massive tsunami in north-eastern Japan, killing around 20,000 people and causing a nuclear disaster in Fukushima, Japan's seismologists are therefore paying particular attention to the Nankai Trench. It is feared that the consequences of a mega-earthquake in this zone would be considerably worse than in 2011.