A powerful earthquake measuring 7.1 on the Richter scale injured 17 people Monday in northern Japan in a new sign of seismic activity a month after the country's deadliest tremor in a decade. The quake jolted Japan's main northern island of Hokkaido at 3:32 am (1832 GMT Sunday), temporarily knocking out power to nearly 1,600 homes and prompting a one-hour alert for tsunami tidal waves, officials said.
"As I reached for the entrance door, lots of things just kept falling. I went outside with no shoes on and then realised my feet hurt. It was a very powerful quake," a woman in her 70s told public broadcaster NHK. Hokkaido was shaken, after the initial quake, by six aftershocks measuring above 4.0 on the Richter scale, the Meteorological Agency official said.
A police spokesman in Hokkaido said at least 17 people were injured, including an 80-year-old woman who broke her arm after falling in her house and a 13-year-old boy whose leg was hurt by broken glass.
The quake's focus was 48 kilometers (30 miles) below sea level in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of the town of Kushiro in Hokkaido, 900 kilometers (560 miles) north of Tokyo, the Meteorological Agency said.
The latest tremor followed a quake registering 6.8 on the Richter scale in the central region of Niigata on October 23, which killed a total of 40 people and was followed by hundreds of aftershocks that have kept residents on edge. The quake cut off electricity for some 1,580 households in Hokkaido, but a spokesman for Hokkaido Electric Power Co said power was restored about three hours later.
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