Wednesday Earthquake in Myanmar a 6.9

YANGON (Reuters) – An earthquake with a magnitude of 6.9 struck northwestern Myanmar on Wednesday, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) said, sending strong tremors through Myanmar, eastern India, Bangladesh and parts of Nepal.

There were no immediate reports of major damage or loss of life as a result of the tremor, located around 100 km (62 miles) north-northwest of the city of Monywa at an estimated depth of 134 km.

But around 50 people suffered mainly leg injuries in the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka and northeastern city of Sylhet as they fled homes and other buildings during the quake, according to police.

Witnesses in Bagan, central Myanmar, said some tourists left their hotel rooms and stood outside when they felt the tremor. They saw no sign of damage to buildings, however.

“We haven’t heard any reports of casualties or damage,” said an official from Myanmar’s meteorological department based in the capital Naypyitaw. “So far as I know the epicenter wasn’t in a densely populated area.”

Electricity was cut off in parts of northeastern India as thermal power stations were shut down as a precautionary measure.

“I felt the tremor three times. I saw people rushing out,” said Rupak De Chowdhuri, a Reuters photographer in the eastern Indian city of Kolkata.

Britain’s Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, who were visiting the northeastern Indian state of Assam on Wednesday, were safe, the British High Commission in New Delhi said.

Tremors were also felt in eastern Nepal.

“We felt the quake. But it was not so strong to make us flee our homes,” said Dinesh Rai, a resident of Nepal’s eastern state of Jhapa.

In March, 2011, at least 74 people were killed in an earthquake in Myanmar near its borders with Thailand and Laos.

(Reporting by Aung Hla Tun in YANGON, New Delhi bureau, Biswajyoti Das in GUWAHATI, Rupak De Chowdhuri in KOLKATA, Jatindra Dash in BHUBANESWAR, Gopal Sharma in KATHMANDU and Ruma Paul in DHAKA; Writing by Rajesh Kumar Singh; Editing by Douglas Busvine and Mike Collett-White)

Earthquake hits Southern Japan

Broken dishes are seen at a restaurant after an earthquake in Kumamoto, southern Japan

By Kiyoshi Takenaka

TOKYO (Reuters) – An earthquake of magnitude 6 hit southern Japan on Thursday, bringing down some buildings and injuring dozens of people, local media reported, but the nuclear regulator reported no problems at power plants.

The quake struck 11 km (7 miles) east of the city of Kumamoto, the U.S. Geological Survey reported. It initially said the magnitude was 6.2 but revised it down. Japanese public broadcaster NHK said the quake registered 6.4.

There was no tsunami warning, but Japan’s chief government spokesman, Yoshihide Suga, said several buildings had collapsed. He gave no more details.

“We intend to do the utmost to grasp the situation,” Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told reporters. “I’m now planning to hear what we have gathered on the situation.”

The Kyodo news agency reported that around 40 people were being treated at a hospital in Kumamoto city, some of them seriously injured.

A fire also broke out in Mashiki, a town of about 34,000 people near the epicenter of the quake. NHK broadcaster showed footage of firefighters tackling a blaze at a building.

Some 16,000 households in the area were without electricity and 38,000 homes had no gas supplies in Kumamoto, Japanese media reported.

At least one aftershock struck the region.

The Nuclear Regulation Authority said there were no irregularities at three nuclear plants on the southernmost island of Kyushu and nearby Shikoku.

Some high-speed trains were halted as a precaution.

Japanese media showed watermelons falling from shelves at a supermarket in Kumamoto, located around 1,900 km (1,150 miles) west of Tokyo.

A quake of 9 magnitude quake struck offshore north of Tokyo in March 2011, causing tsunami waves along the coast which killed nearly 20,000 people and triggered a meltdown at a nuclear power plant.

(Reporting by Tokyo bureau; Editing by Robert Birsel and Mike Collett-White)

Strong earthquake in Pakistan leaves six dead

By Asad Hashim

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) – Six people were killed across northern Pakistan although there appeared to be no widespread damage after a strong earthquake rattled major cities across South Asia at the weekend, authorities said on Monday.

The 6.6-magnitude quake on Sunday startled residents in the Afghan capital, Kabul, and forced some in high-rise buildings to flee into the streets of the Indian capital, New Delhi.

It was also felt in Islamabad and in Lahore in Pakistan’s east, about 630 km (390 miles) from the quake’s epicenter in remote northeastern Afghanistan, just inside the border with Tajikistan and across a narrow finger of land from Chitral – a district in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province in Pakistan’s northwest.

Pakistan’s National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) said five people were killed in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

Another was killed in northern Gilgit-Baltistan state, the NDMA said. At least seven people were reported injured across Pakistan, many of them in the northwestern frontier city of Peshawar.

There were no immediate reports of widespread damage in either Afghanistan or India, despite the quake rattling buildings in all three countries for more than a minute.

The U.S. Geological Survey measured the quake at a depth of about 210 km (130 miles).

Despite its depth, the quake still caused widespread panic in areas such as Chitral, a Reuters witness and a villager in the area said.

“It was a very dangerous situation, because our houses were already damaged from recent rainfall,” said Isa Khan, whose home in the village of Susoom, about 25 km (15 miles) north of Chitral, suffered moderate damage.

Most of the homes in his village are made of mud and brick. “We saw a lot of walls being damaged in front of us,” Khan said.

Pakistan’s NDMA said in a statement the air force had been asked to conduct an aerial photography survey to assess the damage in mountainous Gilgit-Baltistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

Khan said Chitral residents were still awaiting compensation after a 7.5-magnitude quake hit the area on Oct. 26 last year, killing more than 300 people and destroying thousands of homes.

The Hindu Kush area between Pakistan and Afghanistan is seismically active, with quakes often felt across a region where the Indian and Eurasian continental plates collide.

Just over a decade ago, a 7.6-magnitude quake in another part of northern Pakistan killed about 75,000 people.

(Additional reporting by Gul Hammad Farooqi in CHITRAL and Jibran Ahmed in PESHAWAR; Editing by Paul Tait and Himani Sarkar)

‘Hearts are in pieces’ five years after tsunami hits Japan

RIKUZENTAKATA, Japan (Reuters) – Japan on Friday mourned the thousands who lost their lives in a massive earthquake and tsunami five years ago that turned towns to matchwood and triggered the world’s worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl in 1986.

The nine-magnitude quake struck offshore on a chilly Friday, sparking huge black waves along a vast swathe of coastline and killing nearly 20,000 people.

The tsunami crippled the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant, where meltdowns in three reactors spewed radiation over a wide area of the countryside, contaminating water, food and air.

Naoto Kan, the prime minister at the time, has said he feared he would have to evacuate the Japanese capital Tokyo and that Japan’s very existence could have been in peril.

More than 160,000 people were evacuated from nearby towns and some 10 percent still live in temporary housing across Fukushima prefecture. Most have settled outside their hometowns and have begun new lives.

Some areas remain no-go zones due to high radiation. Demonstrators in front of plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co (Tepco) bore signs saying, “Give me back my hometown!”

At cemeteries along the devastated coastline, in front of buildings hollowed out by the wave, and on beaches, families gathered to offer flowers and incense, bowing their heads and wiping away tears.

Flags at central government buildings were at half-mast, some draped in black.

In coastal Rikuzentakata, which was flattened by a wave as much as 56 feet high and lost seven percent of its population along with its entire downtown, pain remains strong.

“The reality is that we still feel the scars here, and there are still many struggling to restart their lives,” said 65-year-old Yashichi Yanashita, a retired city hall official. The four-story city hall was inundated by the wave.

A MOMENT OF SILENCE

At 2:46 p.m., the moment the quake hit, bells rang out in downtown Tokyo and people around the nation bowed their heads in a moment of silence. All the trains on Tokyo’s vast underground paused for a minute.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Emperor Akihito bowed in front of a stage laden with white and yellow flowers in a Tokyo ceremony attended by 1,200 people, including survivors from the stricken area.

“Father, that day, I called your mobile phone so many times, but you didn’t answer … ” said Masakiyo Kimura, who lost his parents to the wave in the city of Onagawa.

“Our house was completely torn from its foundation. Nothing remained except for the pair of matching teacups father and mother used, lying on top of each other.”

Billions of dollars in government spending have helped stricken communities rise from the ruins, including elevating the earth to protect them from future waves and cleaning radiation-contaminated land, but much remains to be done for thousands still languishing in barracks-like temporary housing.

“I get the feeling that the number of people who don’t know what to do, who aren’t even trying, is increasing,” said Kazuo Sato, a former fisherman from Rikuzentakata. “Their hearts are in pieces.”

RECONSTRUCTION CONTINUES

Government spending on reconstruction is set to dip from the start of the new fiscal year in April. But Abe pledged continued support.

“Many people are still leading uncomfortable lives in the affected areas. There are many who cannot return to their beloved homes because of the accident at the nuclear power plant,” he said at the ceremony.

“We commit ourselves to … providing care for their minds and bodies, forming new local communities and supporting industrial development of the affected areas.”

Full recovery will take still longer.

“Infrastructure is recovering, hearts are not. I thought time would take care of things,” said Eiki Kumagai, a Rikuzentakata volunteer fireman who lost 51 colleagues, many killed as they guided others to safety.

“I keep seeing the faces of those who died… There’s so much regret, I can’t express it.”

(Reporting by Elaine Lies, Editing by Linda Sieg, Nick Macfie and)

Pain lingers five years later as tsunami-hit Japan town rises from ruins

RIKUZENTAKATA, Japan (Reuters) – Time has done little to help Japanese volunteer fireman Eiki Kumagai with memories of March 11, 2011, when he clung to some steps as a huge black tsunami surged through his town, washing away people he knew as they cried for help.

“We were recovering bodies,” the 48-year-old recalls. “This is a small town, we knew them all. Women, children, old people. There were so many, we had two layers.”

Five years after Rikuzentakata lost 7 percent of its population and its entire downtown to the 49-foot wave touched off by a magnitude 9 earthquake, a huge construction project has raised its center from future waves.

But while the physical landscape has been changed for the better, emotionally many people in the town of 20,000 remain frozen in grief and psychologists say it may take several generations to ease the trauma fully.

“The year of the tsunami, I was angry at the wave,” said Kazuo Sato, a former oyster fisherman who can still barely look at the sea. He lost 100 friends and relatives.

“What’s left is regret, and that’s getting worse. We could have saved so many more people.”

The town center has been transformed with 5 million cubic tonnes of earth scraped from a nearby mountain and shaped by a fleet of backhoes into mounds up to 46 feet high.

Cranes loom over a towering seawall and new roads snake over the hills.

Home building will finally start this summer, offering hope for 1,400 households still in barracks-like temporary housing.

Officials, including Mayor Futoshi Toba, deplore regulations that delayed construction and worry that with the passing of time, attention will be diverted from a recovery only 60 percent complete. National funds for rebuilding will dip with the new fiscal year from April.

Many also worry that construction for the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo will hamper the rebuilding of the town.

“If construction overlaps, there won’t be enough workers and wages will rise, making houses more expensive,” said Toba, who watched helplessly from the city hall roof as the town was destroyed. His wife, with whom he had spoken moments before the quake, was killed.

“Why did the government want the Olympics in 2020? I think they could easily have hosted them four years later.”

SPRING SNOW

Some residents say the new embankments are uncomfortable reminders of how much their lives have changed.

“I think probably a lot of people have complicated feelings,” said city official Tsuyoshi Yamada. “But their feelings of wanting to live in a safe place are stronger.”

Long-suppressed feelings of anguish are emerging as life slips back into routines, but a stigma against mental illness in Japan makes many people reluctant to seek help.

“They keep their feelings shut tight in their chests out of a sense that others have suffered even more,” said psychologist Kiyoka Yukimoto. “For this city to really recover, they need mental health services.”

Volunteer firemen, who took to the streets telling people to flee as the water loomed, have particularly painful memories. One man began weeping as he recalled 51 colleagues who lost their lives.

“A couple of guys went down to check on an elderly man, even though I said we had no more time. None of them came back,” Kumagai said.

Toba, whose duties kept him from searching for his wife or seeing his children after the quake, said feelings were complex.

“It always snows around 3/11, even though it should be spring. But the weather reminds us of that day and everybody remembers those who died,” he said.

“At the same time, it is five years, so we shouldn’t just talk about gloomy things. We need to look forward and build a place where children can talk about their dreams.”

(Reporting by Elaine Lies; Editing by Linda Sieg, Robert Birsel)

Huge quake strikes off Indonesia but tsunami warnings canceled

By Kanupriya Kapoor and Eveline Danubrata

JAKARTA (Reuters) – A massive quake struck on Wednesday off the Indonesian island of Sumatra, a region devastated by the 2004 Indian Ocean quake and tsunami, but initial fears of another region-wide disaster faded as tsunami warnings were canceled.

Indonesian and Australian authorities called off their tsunami alerts within two hours of the 7.8 magnitude tremor, though it was still unclear if the quake had destroyed any buildings or killed people in Sumatra.

A National Search and Rescue Agency official gave an initial report of some deaths, but later withdrew those comments.

“Up until now, there is no information about deaths,” said Heronimus Guru, the agency’s deputy head of operations.

Any rescue operation will be hampered by the dark, which falls early in the tropical archipelago.

There were no immediate reports of damage, but the shallower a quake, the more dangerous it is. The U.S. Geological Survey originally put the magnitude at 8.2, revising it down to 7.8.

The epicenter was 808 km (502 miles) southwest of the coastal city of Padang. It was 24 km (15 miles) deep, it said, after first putting its depth at 10 km.

“So far there have been no reports (of damage),” Andi Eka Sakya, head of the National Meteorological Agency, told TVOne. “In Bengkulu (in southwest Sumatra) they didn’t feel it at all.”

The National Disaster Mitigation Agency said a tsunami was unlikely.

“Local governments of the city of Padang and some other areas in west Sumatra have said there was no tsunami and the warning can now be revoked,” spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho said.

President Joko Widodo was staying overnight at a hotel in Medan in North Sumatra and was safe, palace officials said. A Medan resident said he did not feel the quake.

Erwin, a resident of Mentawai, a chain of islands off Sumatra, told Metro TV: “I am at the beach currently looking to see any tsunami sign with my flashlight. There’s nothing. A few minutes have passed but nothing, but many people have already evacuated to higher places.”

On Pagai, an island off the west coast of Sumatra, resident Jois Zaluchu told Reuters by phone that there were no reports of damage or casualties there.

But Kompas TV said patients at hospitals in Padang were being evacuated. A TVOne reporter said Padang residents were panicking and there were heavy traffic jams.

Indonesia, especially Aceh, was badly hit by the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004.

A 9.15-magnitude quake opened a fault line deep beneath the ocean on Dec. 26, 2004, triggering a wave as high as 17.4 meters (57 feet) that crashed ashore in more than a dozen countries to wipe some communities off the map in seconds.

The disaster killed 126,741 people in Aceh alone.

Indonesia straddles the so-called “Pacific Ring of Fire”, a highly seismically active zone, where different plates on the earth’s crust meet and create a large number of earthquakes and volcanoes.

(Additional reporting by Randy Fabi, Agustinus Beo Da Costa, Gayatri Suroyo, Cindy Silviana and Heru Aspirhanto; Writing by Nick Macfie; Editing by Clarence Fernandez and Mark Bendeich)

Magnitude 5.1 earthquake hits Oklahoma, state’s third-strongest on record

Oklahoma was hit by one of the strongest earthquakes in the state’s history over the weekend.

The United States Geological Survey (USGS) said the magnitude 5.1 earthquake struck just after 11 a.m. on Saturday, and it was centered about 21 miles northwest of Fairview. According to the Oklahoma Geological Survey (OGS), it was the third-strongest quake ever recorded in the state.

Residents reported feeling strong-to-very-strong shaking near the quake’s center, according to user-submitted data on the USGS website. The agency says such shaking is capable of causing light or moderate damage, but there weren’t any such reports from Saturday’s earthquake.

Cities hundreds of miles away from Fairview experienced lighter shaking.

They included Oklahoma City (100 miles southeast), Fayetteville, Arkansas, (256 miles east), Dallas-Fort Worth (275 miles south) and Kansas City (300 miles northeast), the USGS said.

Five smaller earthquakes followed within 65 minutes of the initial quake, according to the USGS. Those other quakes ranged in magnitude from 2.5 to 3.9.

Oklahoma has seen a significant rise in seismic activity since 2009, and officials have linked the rise to wastewater from oil and gas production. Regulators have taken steps to limit its disposal.

However, the USGS says more than 300 earthquakes of magnitude 2.5 or greater have occurred in Oklahoma in the first 46 days of 2016. That includes eight earthquakes above magnitude 4.0.

Oklahoma only saw 21 magnitude-4.0-or-greater quakes in a 64-month stretch from January 2009 to May 2014, the USGS said in a news release at the time. That includes a magnitude 5.6 earthquake that occurred in November 2011 near Prague, the strongest in the state’s history.

Oklahoma’s second-strongest earthquake was a magnitude 5.5 quake that occurred in April 1952 near El Reno, according to the OGS. The state hasn’t witnessed any other magnitude 5.0 quakes.

However, the USGS and OGS have both warned the recent rise in Oklahoma’s earthquake activity increases the risk that the state could be hit by an even bigger quake in the future.

Last month, Fairview was hit by 20 earthquakes in a span of about nine hours, including two just 30 seconds apart. Those nearly back-to-back earthquakes were initially reported to be

Taiwan earthquake death toll rises, building developer in custody

TAINAN, Taiwan (Reuters) – A local court in the southern Taiwan city of Tainan ruled on Tuesday to take into custody the developer of a building which collapsed during an earthquake at the weekend that killed at least 39 people.

Lin Ming-hui, the Wei-guan Golden Dragon Building’s developer, and two other men from his management team are being held without bail on suspicion of negligent homicide while the authorities finish their investigation, the Tainan District Court said in a statement.

The investigation is being led by the Tainan District Prosecutors Office.

The quake struck at about 4 a.m. on Saturday at the beginning of the Lunar New Year holiday, with almost all of the dead found in Tainan’s toppled Wei-guan Golden Dragon Building. Two people died elsewhere in the city.

Rescue work has focused on the wreckage of the 17-story building, where more than 100 people are listed as missing and are suspected to be buried deep under the rubble.

No survivors have been brought out since Monday evening.

Questions have been raised about the building’s construction quality, especially materials used to build it.

Lawyers for the three detained men were not immediately available to comment.

Hsiao Po-jen, director of the legal affairs department of the Tainan city government, told Reuters that Lin had been arrested on Monday evening.

Reuters witnesses at the scene of the collapse have seen large rectangular, commercial cans of cooking-oil packed inside wall cavities exposed by the damage, apparently having been used as building material.

Taiwan media has also reported the presence of polystyrene in supporting beams, mixed in with concrete.

The Wei-guan, completed in 1994, was the only major high-rise building in the city of two million people to have completely collapsed.

Its lower stories, filled with arcades of shops, pancaked on top of each other before the entire U-shaped complex toppled in on itself.

Deputy Tainan Mayor Tseng Shu-cheng told family members that 103 people were still missing in the rubble.

(Reporting by J.R. Wu, and Faith Hung in TAIPEI; Writing by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Lincoln Feast, Nick Macfie and Mike Collett-White)

More rescued two days after Taiwan quake, death toll could exceed 100

TAINAN, Taiwan (Reuters) – Rescuers pulled out alive an eight-year-old girl and her aunt from the rubble of a Taiwan apartment block on Monday, more than 60 hours after it was toppled by a quake, as the mayor of the southern city of Tainan warned the death toll could exceed 100.

The official death toll from the quake rose to 38, with more than 100 people missing.

The girl, named as Lin Su-Chin, was conscious and had been taken to hospital, Taiwan television stations said. Her aunt, Chen Mei-jih, was rescued shortly after.

The quake struck at about 4 a.m. on Saturday at the beginning of the Lunar New Year holiday, with almost all the dead found in Tainan’s toppled Wei-guan Golden Dragon Building.

Rescue efforts are focused on the wreckage of the 17-story building, where more than 100 people are listed as missing and are suspected to be buried deep under the rubble.

Earlier, Wang Ting-yu, a legislator who represents the area, told reporters that a woman, identified as Tsao Wei-ling, was found alive, lying under her dead husband. Their two-year-old son, who was also killed, was found nearby.

Another survivor, a man named Li Tsung-tian, was pulled out later, with Taiwan television stations showing live images of the rescues. Several hours later, Li’s girlfriend was found dead in the rubble.

Tsao and Li were both being treated in hospital.

Tainan Mayor William Lai said during a visit to a funeral home that rescue efforts had entered what he called the “third stage”.

“There are more fatalities than those pulled out (alive), and the number of fatalities will probably exceed 100,” Lai told reporters.

Rescuers continued to scramble over the twisted wreckage of the building as numbed family members stood around, waiting for news of missing relatives.

Taiwan’s government said in a statement 36 of the 38 dead were from the Wei-guan building, which was built in 1994.

President-elect Tsai Ing-wen, who won election last month, said there needed to be a “general sorting out” of old buildings to make sure they were able to cope with disasters like earthquakes.

“There needs to be a continued strengthening of their ability to deal with disasters,” she said.

Outgoing President Ma Ying-jeou, speaking to reporters at a Tainan hospital, said the government needed to be a better job in ensuring building quality.

“In the near future, regarding building management, we will have some further improvements. We will definitely do this work well,” Ma said.

Reuters witnesses at the scene of the collapse saw large rectangular, commercial cans of cooking-oil packed inside wall cavities exposed by the damage, apparently having been used as building material.

Chinese President Xi Jinping also conveyed condolences to the victims, state news agency Xinhua reported late on Sunday, and repeated Beijing’s offer to provide help.

China views self-ruled Taiwan as a wayward province, to be bought under its control by force if necessary.

(Additional reporting by Faith Hung in Taipei and Megha Rajagopalan in Beijing; Writing by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Paul Tait and Nick Macfie)

Powerful earthquake causes damage in southern Taiwan

TAIPEI (Reuters) – A powerful earthquake struck southern Taiwan on Saturday near the city of Tainan, toppling at least one apartment building and collapsing other structures although there were no immediate reports of deaths or serious injuries.

At least five aftershocks of 3.8-magnitude or more shook Tainan about half an hour after the initial quake, according to Taiwan’s Central Weather Bureau.

Taiwan’s Formosa TV showed images of police, firefighters and some troops in camouflage uniforms at the site of a collapsed residential building and said its reporters could hear the cries of some residents trapped inside.

The firefighters were hosing down part of the building to prevent a fire, while others used ladders and a crane to enter the upper floors.

The building appeared to have collapsed onto the first story where a child’s clothes were visible fluttering on a laundry line.

Taiwan lies in the seismically active “Pacific Ring of Fire” zone and it was struck by a magnitude 7.7 quake that killed more than 2,400 people in September 1999.

The U.S. Geological Survey said the latest quake, a magnitude 6.4, was centered 27 miles southeast of Tainan, a city of nearly 2 million people.

The quake was very shallow, at depth of 6.2 miles, which would have amplified its effects, the USGS said.

Taiwan’s China Post newspaper said on its website that more than one building collapsed in the quake.

“Collapsed buildings reported in Tainan, with rescue workers arriving on scene. The city government there has set up a level one emergency response center. Onlookers are urged not to block access to emergency crews moving into the area,” the newspaper said.

Tainan city’s fire department confirmed earlier that at least one building had partially collapsed and Liu Shih-chung, an official with the Tainan City Government, told Reuters the city had set up an emergency response center. Official information about the extent of damages from the quake was not immediately available.

According to the USGS, the last time Taiwan was struck by a quake of the same magnitude as Saturday’s was in April 2015, but that temblor was much deeper.

(Reporting by JR Wu and Tomasch Janowski; Additional reporting by Eric Walsh and Eric Beech; Editing by Sandra Maler and Tom Brown)