There were three really big earthquakes plus a ton of other smaller ones, it was pretty crazy. I'm staying in western Kumamoto City, aside from a bunch of unreinforced brick walls falling over and roof tiles sliding off roofs, the damage was pretty minimal. Most of the damage was in Mashiki Town, which is just to the east of Kumamoto city. Not to mention that there was significant damage to Kumamoto Castle. Got to say, there is a pretty much constant rumble right now, punctuated by some magnitude 4 earthquakes. Pretty minor compared to the two magnitude 6.4 earthquakes last night. It felt like a violent mosh pit.
I live at the tip of Honshu and we had a few level 5 quakes last night. They've been on and off for the last two days. Ours are only tremors from the main one but they're still strong. My house is built on sliding blocks so the house actually does move quite a bit. Thankfully nothing is broken. By the way, that bridge that collapsed in Kumamoto is famous for Ghosts. Or so the locals say. Never saw any when I used it.
I didn't hear about the ghosts thing. I did a tour of Minamiaso last month, so I did go across the bridge. The road that the landslide crossed is the main road into Aso, going to make it difficult to get there for a while.
Pick up some bottles of water and leave them in your car in case. Large quakes and shift many more fault lines.
Would love to be positive but my advice is get ready for "land on wheels". After 3/11 there were sizable tremors for a fucking month. Stressful. Glad to hear everyone is okay. Was a bit concerned for Yakumo but honestly, I thought at worst his Saturn games collection might have fallen over.
Well, we didn't have any damage at our apartment. I'm moving to Germany next week, so only one more week of aftershocks for me (still a few every hour). The only thing I really have in Japan that is of note is my collection of Super NES and Super Famicom prototypes. They were still in the exact same spot they were before, so I imagine they are fine. We haven't had running water since the magnitude 7.3 earthquake, but they expect it will be running today. Natural gas and electricity are fine, and the grocery stores had plenty of food aside from bread (I heard that a lot of the bread in Kyushu is baked in Kumamoto). Most of the big damage is in Mashiki, which is about 10 km from where I am, got to feel bad for the people there. Most of the buildings that collapsed were constructed prior to 1995. After the Hanshin Earthquake, they put a lot more regulations on buildings. Of course, the worst thing is that the main road to Aso was covered by a landslide, and it also destroyed the bridge to Minamiaso (South Aso). Just note, I have taken university courses on earthquakes (I'm a geophysicist), and have a lot of good friends who work in seismology and earthquake preparedness. I've had all the lectures on what to do long before this happened.
Problem is big ones can have a zipper effect on fault lines and there could be some real big ones, please be careful. Here is a small map of the fault lines:
Nope, nothing fell over in my house thanks tho the earthquake plates the house is built one The quakes are moving up the east side so we are safe now.
And now Mt. Aso decided to go active. It's right in the middle of the fault zone. You should expect much more earthquakes, and I'd worry about Mt. Sakurajima, it's right next to Kagoshima.
Mt Aso has been erupting on a regular basis since November 2014. There was actually an eruption about 3 weeks ago. It really isn't much to worry about. Plus Sakurajima erupts almost every day. It is far enough away from the earthquake zone that it wouldn't be affected, even if it could be conclusively proven that nearby earthquakes cause volcanic eruptions. If you want a volcano to worry about, it is Mt Unzen. It last erupted between 1990 and 1995, and produced a 600 m high cone during that period. The only people who died were some National Geographic volcanologists and a posse of reporters following them. Mt Unzen is about 40 km from the main epicenter, but the fault zone does come a bit closer than that in the south. In my professional opinion, the magnitude 7.3 that happened early Saturday morning is likely to be the largest earthquake. Of course, there will be many more aftershocks - there have already been nearly 600 earthquakes since Thursday night. More magnitude ~6 sized earthquakes are a distinct possibility, and could destroy houses that are already damaged. It seems that the earthquake zone is moving to to the northeast and southwest of the main shock. There was a magnitude 5.8 earthquake in northeastern Kumamoto last night, for instance. Running water was restored at our apartment this morning, so it is pretty much back to normal for us. I'll be leaving Kumamoto on Sunday. I still feel bad for this poor tanuki:
