Tokyo: A powerful earthquake with a preliminary
magnitude of 6.4 knocked over houses in southern Japan on Thursday
evening, and police said people may be trapped underneath.
There were no immediate reports of casualties from the 9:26 pm quake, and no risk of a tsunami.
"There
was a ka-boom and the whole house shook violently sideways," Takahiko
Morita, a resident of Mashiki, the town at the epicenter, said in a
telephone interview with Japanese broadcaster NHK. "Furniture and
bookshelves fell down, books were all over the floor."
Morita said some houses and walls collapsed in his neighborhood, and water supply was cut off.
A woman collects fallen dishes at a restaurant after an earthquake in Kumamoto, southern Japan on Thursday. AP
Police
in Kumamoto prefecture said they have received reports of a number of
collapsed houses and people possibly trapped inside.
Mashiki is east of Kumamoto city, about 1,300 kilometers (800 miles) southwest of Tokyo.
Japan's
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told a news conference that
damage was being assessed, but there were no abnormalities at nearby
nuclear facilities.
The epicenter was 120 kilometers (74 mile) northeast of the Sendai nuclear plant, the only one operating in the country.
NHK
showed Mashiki town hall in the dark, apparently having lost power.
Footage also showed rubble on the road, shards of glasses and broken
windows, and fire breaking out in some places, with firefighters
battling an orange blaze.
Keisukei Urata, an official at nearby Uki city, said he was driving home when the quake struck at 9:26 p.m.
He also said he saw some walls around houses collapsing.
Parts of the ceiling at Uki City Hall also collapsed, windows were broken and cabinets fell to the ground, he said.
Kasumi
Nakamura, an official in the village of Nishihara near the epicenter,
said that the rattling started modestly and grew violent, lasting about
30 seconds.
"Papers, files, flower vases and everything fell on the floor," he told NHK. He said there were aftershocks.
One aftershock measuring 5.7 struck about 40 minutes later, according to Japan's Meteorological Agency.
The
US Geological Survey put the quake's preliminary magnitude at 6.2 and
said it was 23 kilometers (14 miles) deep. It said there's a low
likelihood of casualties but some damage is possible.
Footage on
NHK showed a signboard hanging from the ceiling at its local bureau
violently shaking. File cabinets rattled, books, files and papers rained
down to the floor, and one employee appeared to have fallen off a
chair, while others slid underneath their desks to protect their heads.