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7.1 Earthquake in Japan
- sideras56 2mo agoI haven't tried the worldmonitor project on github, does it have the ability to let us notice the earthquake?
- vaylian 2mo agoDoes anyone know if this also affects South Korea?
- GreyMolecules 2mo agoNever felt anything in SK
- asp_hornet 2mo agoThank you for this update.
- barosl 2mo agoI was told that some people in Busan, the Korean city nearest to Japan, felt the earthquake and even felt dizzy.
- jasmcole 2mo agoI'm in Busan, though I didn't feel anything. (I was on the beach at the time though.)
- masklinn 2mo agoGiven it’s barely even felt outside of Kyushu (JMA 3, the dark blue dots, is "dishes may rattle, some people walking outside notice") that seems unlikely.
- unsupp0rted 2mo agoEvery once in a while (not every year) there are minor earthquakes you can feel in some parts of SK, like Busan: the ground tremors a bit, some shelves wobble... that's the most I've ever noticed.
- TZubiri 2mo ago7.1 seems to mean non resistant buildings may collapse.
- sevenzero 2mo agoYea seems pretty bad given its on the higher end of the scale... I might be naive but I hope nobody died
- echoangle 2mo agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Kumamoto_earthquakes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Kumamoto_earthquakes The main shock of this one at 7.0 killed 277 people so sadly I think it’s pretty likely there will be some deaths.
- markdown 2mo agoIt's Japan though. They don't have non-resistant buildings.
- klausa 2mo agoThere's plenty of old buildings here that are not built up to the latest standards; increasing exponentially the further you get from the core of a big city. Japan is _very good_ at tearing down old buildings and building better in their place; but it doesn't mean that there are zero old buildings around.
- amelius 2mo agoWouldn't the not so strong old buildings have collapsed during previous quakes?
- klausa 2mo agoThey could have been further away from the epicenter of the previous ones, or the previous ones weren't strong enough to cause that specific structure to collapse, the previous ones might have weakened the structure and this one brought it down, a million different things factor into this. Earthquakes aren't a perfectly repeatable occurrences you can run a regression test against.
- what_hn 2mo agoShit hope everyone is ok.
- minraws 2mo agoTldr; Seems like major cities didn't get hit by the earthquake at 7 scale. Hoping for zero casualities.
- minraws 2mo agoApparently there is a risk for tsunami so Japanese govt has issued a further alert. Hope it isn't anything too bad either
- Melatonic 2mo agoHaven't seen anything on the Tsunami global warning list so hopefully it's okay. Earthquake looks centered on land which (to my unofficial understanding) means low risk of Tsunami but of course higher chance of direct damage
- canpan 2mo agoSimilar strength and location as the 2016 one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Kumamoto_earthquakes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Kumamoto_earthquakes
- alexissantos 2mo agoI was camping/bike packing in Kyushu when this happened! I think I was in Miyazaki on the 14th when we felt the first shock. It was the first earthquake I’d experienced. The multi-story hotel we stayed at felt like it was gyrating in a circular fashion. Then my pal and I were camping by the Utagenka Bridge, east of Kumamoto for the main shock!
- ButlerianJihad 2mo agoUnited States Geological Survey https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/map/?extent=21.04224,114.2138&extent=45.76659,161.27923&listOnlyShown=true&baseLayer=terrain https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/map/?extent=21.04224... Live NHK-WORLD-NEWS feed (English-language commentator) https://www.youtube.com/live/f0lYkdA-Gtw?si=Sc8ZbldZUQESiJQZ https://www.youtube.com/live/f0lYkdA-Gtw?si=Sc8ZbldZUQESiJQZ
- Jn2G3Np8 2mo agoThe HNK stream can also be viewed at https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/live_tv/ https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/live_tv/ with English dubs. The youtube feed looks to have stopped for now.
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- mrwaffle 2mo agoWas looking at webcams here (https://tokyo.fyi https://tokyo.fyi) but realized this is further south.
- ibaikov 2mo agoFound a few online webcams, but I'm not really sure I saw the earthquake. People didn't even seem to stop on the webcam I was watching. Lots of cars on the bridge afterwards though while before it there were much less, idk
- ViscountPenguin 2mo agoSome of the webcams are fake fwiw, I noticed a while ago when there were ads emblassened with old dates on them. Edit: to be clear, this was random ones on YouTube, not sure about that site.
- ibaikov 2mo agoWoah yes I found those on YouTube, didn’t expect them to be fake. This kind of makes sense but also makes me very disappointed of humanity
- tkgally 2mo agoIn parts of Kumamoto Prefecture, it registered 7 on the Japanese shindo (seismic intensity) scale, which reflects the amount of ground shaking at a particular location. The shindo is a better indicator of the likely amount of damage than the magnitude is. A shindo of 7 is extremely strong [1]. Ten minutes ago (at around 17:15 p.m. Japan time), NHK was reporting that there were many emergency calls coming in from Uki City, where shindo 7 was recorded, but that the extent of the damage or injuries was not yet known. There have also been many aftershocks, including some strong ones, and tsunami warnings. [1] https://www.jma.go.jp/jma/en/Activities/jishintsunami/jishintsunami_low6.pdf https://www.jma.go.jp/jma/en/Activities/jishintsunami/jishin...
- akg_67 2mo agoNHK TV is showing extensive damage including fallen smokestacks at Nippon Paper Factory facility, bridge road separation, fallen bridge lane, road cracks, fire, water coming out of drainage etc. It was a huge earthquake and will take some time to assess the damage.
- ktallett 2mo agoThere is a collapsed roof of a shopping centre as well in Kumamoto. The Aeon Mall.
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- kalleboo 2mo agoThe mall had a (most likely gas) explosion, and there are many dead being found inside https://newsdig.tbs.co.jp/articles/-/2833412?display=1 https://newsdig.tbs.co.jp/articles/-/2833412?display=1
- traceroute66 2mo ago> The mall had a (most likely gas) explosion If the internet searches are to be believed, that is indeed sadly likely to be the cause. The internet suggests the explosion happened on the second floor of the mall where a large food court is located.
- kuczmama 2mo agoI'm living in the South of Japan, it was a 4 intensity where I am (about 90km) from the epicenter. Luckily there was only some light shaking and nothing fell over here.
- DiscourseFan 2mo agoKumamoto is barely finished rebuilding from the last quake, you can still see cracks in structures as you drive down the road. This is really horrible; not to mention the city is already beginning to depopulate as the youth move north to Fukuoka.
- spike021 2mo agoI wouldn't let this get in the way of going there though. Kumamoto is a very nice prefecture to see. They will rebuild (again) and it'll continue to be a great place.
- DiscourseFan 2mo agoNo I mean of course, I thought Kumamoto was very nice and I especially enjoyed visiting Mt Aso, I was lucky enough to see into the crater and hike around the peaks
- spike021 2mo agoI get it. Same here. Aso is probably one of my favorite places in Kyushu. Also, the michi-no-eki at the bottom is fantastic.
- walrus01 2mo agoIt's my understanding that small to medium sized cities (and rural areas) depopulating is going on now throughout almost all of Japan. One of the things that really surprised me recently is how low the cost of real estate is for an older, normal middle class home in some sparsely populated areas of Japan. Apparently the declining population and younger people not wanting to live in their parents' rural countryside home is having a significant effect on property values.
- epolanski 2mo ago> One of the things that really surprised me recently is how low the cost of real estate is for an older, normal middle class home in some sparsely populated areas of Japan. If you're willing to move to depopulating areas houses cost a little kinda everywhere. In Puglia, Italy, in my in laws village (8'000 people), you can buy a freshly renovated, rather huge house for 50k, and you can likely find livable ones, not renovated at the 10-15k. In US, in many rural areas you can buy a whole home in good conditions at the 50k mark. Japan follows the same trend, and yes, I've traveled Japan some, there's plenty of almost-ghost towns nowadays where you can buy real estate for pennies as well.
- 41d 2mo agoI hope everyone is safe in Kumamoto. In my area, we have been repeatedly warned that a major earthquake called the Nankai Trough is likely to occur in the last few years or decades, so I am very scared of big earthquakes happening in other areas as well.
- decimalenough 2mo agoTo be a bit more precise, the Nankai ("South Sea") Trough is a tectonic subduction zone to the south of Japan, roughly the entire length from Izu to Kyushu: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nankai_Trough https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nankai_Trough And Nankai megathrust earthquakes are those caused by plate movement there: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nankai_megathrust_earthquakes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nankai_megathrust_earthquakes Statistically major earthquakes occur here every 90-200 years, and the last was in 1946.
- kebman 2mo ago[dead]
- koito17 2mo agoI've heard there's been a lot of redevelopment in Nagoya, in preparation for a possible future earthquake from the Nankai Trough. Exactly one month ago, there was almost consecutive daily earthquakes in Kantō region. Always a good reminder the whole country lies on seismically active fault lines.
- 1317 2mo ago[flagged]
- amelius 2mo agowhat if you have family there ...
- 1317 2mo agoyou will hear about it from them, no one is going to news.ycombinator.com to find out the latest safety information
- Scroll_Swe 2mo agoI just like any new bing thing happening. We had: The Pride attack in Germany The knfie stabbing in Paris and now this
- Cider9986 2mo agoYou like it?
- Scroll_Swe 2mo agoYea I like to monitor situations.
- Foskya 2mo agoIt may not affects me personally but i'm still interested in the topic and the discussions it generates.
- aaron695 2mo ago[dead]
- asdaqopqkq 2mo agoarent they trying to make silicon fabs there?
- dopa42365 2mo agoNot like earthquakes are unheard of in Taiwan or South Korea either. Buildings are going to be more expensive (base isolation and an extra commie blocks worth of reinforced concrete), but given how expensive fab equipment is, that might not even matter all that much.
- kalleboo 2mo agoEarthquake isolation can be pretty amazing. Here’s a video of a data center during the big 2011 quake. The camera is attached to the outer wall so the point of reference makes the wrong side look like it’s shaking, but you can see the people walking without difficulty during some pretty heavy shaking. A fab will have even better stuff. https://youtu.be/GXwQSCStRaw https://youtu.be/GXwQSCStRaw
- smj-edison 2mo agoWow, it's incredible how far civil engineering has come in the past 600 years. To think that we used to have bridges collapse all the time, and buildings crack and collapse, and now we have buildings that can withstand a whole earthquake.
- klausa 2mo ago“A whole earthquake” is a very funny way to phrase it when it comes to Japan. That building has withstood tens of smaller ones before that big one, they’re just _incredibly_ common here.
- zuzululu 2mo agoSouth Korea? Almost nil. It's not known to be a seismological region. Taiwan, Japan have far more exposure to a long history of earthquakes, tsunamis. For Taiwan, there is another existential threat man made.
- shoobiedoo 2mo agoFukuoka here (about 100km from Kumamoto) and definitely felt it, so it must have been a real big one in Kumamoto itself. My friend was driving home from work closer to Miyazaki and didn't feel the quake, but had huge hailstones hitting his car. There's a rapture going on or something
- embedding-shape 2mo ago[flagged]
- klausa 2mo agoI’m genuinely asking here - is climate change thought to have influence on earthquakes? I wouldn’t have expected so, but maybe there are some non-obvious pathways for it to be the case?
- jjkaczor 2mo agoIn theory - maybe - melting of glaciers and polar icecaps could be a factor - but not everywhere: - https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-climate-change-could-trigger-earthquakes/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-climate-chang... - https://www.weforum.org/stories/climate-action/climate-change-trigger-earthquakes-volcanoes/ https://www.weforum.org/stories/climate-action/climate-chang... (Thinking that perhaps the hailstones were what the original commenter was referring too - although, perhaps the gods are just unhappy with the state of the world overall - this isn't the first big earthquake this year, huge numbers of forest fires, record heat levels...)
- pennomi 2mo agoI have a vivid recollection of a crotchety old man in Southern California telling me “yup, this is earthquake weather” on a hot, clear day. (There wasn’t an earthquake that day.) It was so bizarre and disconnected from science that it was burned into my mind. Thanks for unlocking that memory. That being said, there is some redistribution of tectonic weight that may happen due to entire ice caps melting… that has the potential to trigger movement.
- numpad0 2mo ago- at least 50 hospitalized due to various injuries[1] - 9 missing, 12 house collapses, 4 trappings, 7 fires so far[1] - multiple highway road bridges snapped, roads damaged[2] - AEON brand shopping mall exploded following evacuation, cause unknown[3] - chimney collapsed at Nippon Seishi paper factory[4] - TSMC, Sony, Fujifilm chips, imagers, materials plants evacuated[4] - epicenter reported as 32.6N 130.7E[5], roughly 20km/12mi south of previous major earthquake[7], 320km/200mi SE from Busan, 650km/400mi from Seoul, 900km/550mi WSW from Tokyo, likewise 900km/550mi due east from Shanghai, 1200km/730mi due south to Vladivostok, etc - stone wall behind a moat damaged again at Kumamoto castle[8] 1: https://news.web.nhk/newsweb/na/na-k10015188641000 https://news.web.nhk/newsweb/na/na-k10015188641000 2: https://news.web.nhk/newsweb/na/na-k10015188611000 https://news.web.nhk/newsweb/na/na-k10015188611000 3: https://news.web.nhk/newsweb/na/na-k10015188721000 https://news.web.nhk/newsweb/na/na-k10015188721000 4: https://news.web.nhk/newsweb/na/na-k10015188691000 https://news.web.nhk/newsweb/na/na-k10015188691000 5: https://www.nikkei.com/article/DGXZQOGM287FG0Y6A720C2000000/ https://www.nikkei.com/article/DGXZQOGM287FG0Y6A720C2000000/ 6: https://www.data.jma.go.jp/multi/quake/quake_detail.html?eventID=20260728163528&lang=en https://www.data.jma.go.jp/multi/quake/quake_detail.html?eve... 7: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Kumamoto_earthquakes?useskin=vector https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Kumamoto_earthquakes?uses... 8: https://search.yahoo.co.jp/realtime/search/tweet/2082005760830210312 https://search.yahoo.co.jp/realtime/search/tweet/20820057608...
- makeitdouble 2mo agoOn top of that, one of the toughest part could be the extent of the power outage. It's reported at around 46000 homes, the region has many elders and the outage will impact air conditionners, but also medical equipment they keep at home and supporting appliances. https://news.yahoo.co.jp/articles/55a0a3ebb9d0087ae8492ce85cea4d9aa11c66ae https://news.yahoo.co.jp/articles/55a0a3ebb9d0087ae8492ce85c...
- zuzululu 2mo ago> TSMC, Sony, Fujifilm chips, imagers, materials plants evacuated This makes me think, is it wise to build these places in regions with known earthquake trends. Almost no earthquakes in Korea and Samsung fabs are also located in the most safe area within Korea.
- _joel 2mo agohttps://edition.cnn.com/2026/07/28/asia/japan-earthquake-intl https://edition.cnn.com/2026/07/28/asia/japan-earthquake-int... for some Reuters reporting.
- lofaszvanitt 2mo ago[flagged]
- dncornholio 2mo agoFor anyone that had their heart skip a beat like me: "The Japanese Nuclear Energy Agency says no damage has been detected at three nearby nuclear power plants."
- dataneedscoffee 2mo ago[flagged]
- xiaodai 2mo agoalso earth quake in china.
- nimishpatel19 2mo agoohh. what was the intensity?
- clarle 2mo agoIt’s been officially revised down to 6.8, but that’s still a lot. Hope the residents of Kumamoto Prefecture stay safe and are able to evacuate.
- inclinq 2mo agoI'm in Fukuoka. We had shindo 3 here. My phone alarm went off just before the shaking, but the thing that really surprised me was how strong it felt. I instinctively ran outside. I hope everyone closer to the epicenter is safe.
- goginko 2mo agoThis was my first real earthquake since moving to Kyushu. After it stopped I looked it up, and the first place to post the epicenter and shindo was NERV's twitter...which is named after the org from the anime and has an anime screenshot as its banner (https://x.com/EN_NERV https://x.com/EN_NERV). Apparently it's a real disaster information service, though. It's been mentioned before but maybe interesting to some (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38835419 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38835419).
- reustle 2mo agoYou can keep an eye on this english tracker in the browser too https://earthquakesjapan.com https://earthquakesjapan.com
- klausa 2mo agoIt started as a Twitter account during the Tohoku 2011 earthquake, and then subsequently became a “real” service; the IP owners for the Eva agreed to let them use it going forward.
- ramses0 2mo agoI really love hearing/learning about this! Imagine "The Mickey Mouse Earthquake Alarm" vs. "Yeah, NERV-Alerts, nbd..." I never watched much anime, but an old college roommate put me through Neon Genesis Evangelion and it holds a special place in my heart. :-)
- timr 2mo agoThe Nerv app is quite good. It usually gives real-time alerts faster than the official sources. You can even have the weird experience of being notified of an earthquake, watching the shockwave move outward from the epicenter, and feeling it as it passes.
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- SomaticPirate 2mo ago
- thenthenthen 2mo agoThis was felt in Shanghai, like a truck passing by. The second one in two months?
- engkimo 2mo ago[dead]
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- rwroks 2mo agoIt is currently summer vacation season in Japan, so we expect there to be many tourists. We hope everyone stays safe.
- positron26 2mo ago8 is serious. 9 is Pacific subduction rupture. 7 is not really top news of the day. People with friends and family exposed don't really appreciate being false-alarmed with 7s and 6s.
- smrq 2mo agoI'm sure everyone in the hospital and with collapsed houses would agree with your assessment that it's not a big deal.
- positron26 2mo agoOkay. Let's make every such instance news? HN is exaggerating to feel close to the action. It's childish. There is a trench off of Tokyo that is likely to rupture in our lifetimes, and people who have other people to check on don't care about HN's disaster fantasies.
- dgellow 2mo agoThe HN audience decides what is top news of the day, that’s the whole principle this website is based upon
- sedatk 2mo ago273 people died from a 7.0 earthquake in Kumamoto in 2016.
- positron26 2mo agoIs that the earthquake in question? No. So your hair-splitting is motivated by what again? Rationalizing HN overreacting so that people can be entertained? Everyone here is "winning" an online argument with zero regard for the false alarm all the karma farming causes.
- neverenderr 2mo agoIt is very sad
- hndbwksam7 2mo ago[flagged]
- JasonHEIN 2mo agobless them
- reducesuffering 2mo agoWhy does this earthquake, of similar magnitude, get so much more attention compared to the recent Venezuelan earthquake last month that was 100x more devastating? There was no commentary on HN about it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Venezuela_earthquakes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Venezuela_earthquakes
- w7 2mo agoVenezuela's own choices. https://rsf.org/en/venezuela-censorship-exacerbates-earthquake-crisis-putting-more-lives-risk https://rsf.org/en/venezuela-censorship-exacerbates-earthqua...
- reducesuffering 2mo agoIf anything that should warrant more attention...
- w7 2mo agoThe few socialist papers that I've read make the claim that there is nothing to pay attention to, and that the event is "American Propaganda" to try and make Venezuela look weak. The government attempts to control and suppress videos of the event. Following the event involves trying to see past the state's narrative and take in anything that trickles through. Combine this with the fact that it's likely far easier for most HN readers to send aid to, or know someone in, a friendly nation like Japan. You get the recipe for coverage of Venezuela being muted by comparison. https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2026/06/venezuela-human-rights-must-guide-earthquake-response-amid-devastating-crisis/ https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2026/06/venezuela-hum...
- Georgelemental 2mo agoVenezuela supposedly is a "friendly nation" now though, ever since the palace coup
- queenkjuul 2mo ago
- zuzululu 2mo agoHope everybody is staying safe in Japan but this will not be the last earthquake, there are many experts pointing this as the beginning with even bigger magnitude coming up. I'd strongly caution against a Japan trip right now.
- kalleboo 2mo agoGPS reference data shows the ground has been displaced as much as 84 centimeters https://news.web.nhk/newsweb/na/na-k10015189191000 https://news.web.nhk/newsweb/na/na-k10015189191000
- kalleboo 2mo agoMany emergency shelters have not had their building safety confirmed so parking lots are opened to allow people to sleep in their cars, as they are warned to avoid "economy-class syndrome" from sleeping in a tight space. https://news.web.nhk/newsweb/na/na-k10015189161000 https://news.web.nhk/newsweb/na/na-k10015189161000
- potentdream 2mo agothoughts and prayers
- Razengan 2mo agoMan, why are the beautiful places of this world so much at constant risk :(
- dredmorbius 2mo agoThere's this burning Ring of Fire.... <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_of_Fire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_of_Fire>
- RS-232 2mo agoAnd you will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not alarmed, for this must take place, but the end is not yet. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be famines and earthquakes in various places. All these are but the beginning of the birth pains.
- coffee 2mo agoI'm 10 minutes from Kashima (where the Aeon mall is) and the quake was violent. But that's not the worst part, it's all the aftershocks that keep coming (just had yet another about an hour ago). They've been frequent. The locals tell me that the worst is yet to come. The big quake 10 years had this pattern, a sizable shake, lot's of aftershocks, then the big destructive one hit. Everyone in the area is on edge.