Quake triggers tsunami alert as second quake hits Japan

A major earthquake this morning raised tsunami fears across the Indian Ocean while a second tremor shook buildings in Japan. The magnitude 7.6 quake struck undersea the Indian Ocean off India's Andaman Islands. The Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre put India, Burma, Indonesia, Thailand and Bangladesh on alert after the first tremor off the Andaman Islands. But that warning was later lifted. The quake was 163 miles north of Port Blair in the islands, which belong to India, the US Geological Survey reported. At the same time, a 6.5 magnitude earthquake jolted Tokyo and surrounding areas of Japan. More than 60 people were hurt by the Japan quake, in the Pacific Ocean, about 105 miles southwest of Tokyo, at a depth of 16 miles.

"We all ran out as fast as possible and have not gone back inside, fearing another quake. Everything was shaking, we are all very, very scared," Subhasis Paul, who runs a shop in North Andaman, told Reuters news agency. "People are calling each other out of their homes and everyone is huddled together outside," Paul said from Diglipur, about 300 km (185 miles) north of Port Blair, the capital of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.

The small chain of islands lie hundreds of miles east of India in the Indian Ocean. It may have triggered a destructive wave along coasts up to 1,000 km (600 miles) from the epicentre, said The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Pacific Tsunami Warning Center. But it later withdrew its warning. No deaths have been reported after Japan’s quake, but at least three injured people are thought to be in a serious condition. Across the country, motorways, train services and nuclear power stations were all closed down. Buildings shook, objects fell from shelves and people woke from their sleep in Tokyo. Water pipes burst, about 10,000 homes had power cuts and small landslides collapsed freeways. Two nuclear reactors at a nearby nuclear power plant shut down automatically.

The quake centred in the Pacific Ocean, about 105 miles south-west of Tokyo, according to the US Geological Survey. The most recent of Japan's great earthquakes, the Hanshin, which hit Kobe in January 1995, had an MMS of 6.8 and killed about 6400 people. Back in 2004, a massive quake in the Indian Ocean caused a tsunami that killed some 228,000 people, mostly in the Indonesian province of Aceh on the northern tip of Sumatra Island. Today, a meteorology agency official in Indonesia told the news service his agency was monitoring Aceh, but there had been no reports of a tsunami.

By Hayley Jarvis for SOS Children