Magnitude 7.6 quake triggers a tsunami on Japan’s northern coast

A pow­er­ful 7. 6-mag­ni­tude earth­quake struck late Mon­day off north­ern Japan, trig­ger­ing a tsuna­mi of up to 70 cen­time­ters (27 inch­es) in Pa­cif­ic coast com­mu­ni­ties and warn­ings of po­ten­tial­ly high­er surges, the Japan­ese Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Agency said.

Sev­er­al peo­ple were in­jured, me­dia re­ports said.

The quake struck at about 11:15 p.m. (1415 GMT) in the Pa­cif­ic Ocean about 80 kilo­me­ters (50 miles) off the coast of Ao­mori, the north­ern­most pre­fec­ture of Japan’s main Hon­shu is­land, the agency said.

A tsuna­mi of 70 cen­time­ters was mea­sured in Ku­ji port in Iwate pre­fec­ture, just south of Ao­mori, and tsuna­mi lev­els of up to 50 cen­time­ters struck oth­er coastal com­mu­ni­ties in the re­gion, the agency said.

The agency is­sued an alert for po­ten­tial tsuna­mi surges of up to 3 me­ters (10 feet) in some ar­eas, and Chief Cab­i­net Sec­re­tary Mi­noru Ki­hara urged res­i­dents to im­me­di­ate­ly head to high­er ground or take shel­ter in­side build­ings or evac­u­a­tion cen­ters un­til the alert is lift­ed.

Sev­er­al peo­ple were in­jured at a ho­tel in the Ao­mori town of Hachi­no­he and a man in the town of To­hoku was slight­ly hurt when his car fell in­to a hole, pub­lic broad­cast­er NHK re­port­ed.