This has been a weird summer. Rain, cool temps and typhoons and now earthquakes!
7 dead, over 700 wounded in a strong earth quake in Niigata prefecture near Kashiwazaki city:
This video is from Niigata City.
Prime Minister Abe was in Nagasaki and was rushed back to Tokyo by JASDF aircraft. The following video explains that while showing pictures from Nagaoka city and other places of what is being called the Nigata Chuetsu Oki Jishin (Niigata central big earthquake). See for your self:
All over the news here as one might expect. 68 aftershocks so far, but none felt down here in the Kanto plain. The Nagano mountains tend to shield us from those things.
However, if that news were not enough, this also has raised concerns about nuclear power (Genhatsu) again in Japan:
The 10:13 a.m. quake also caused a blaze at a nuclear plant, the first fire at a nuclear plant to be caused by a quake, according to officials of the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry.
The quake caused minor tsunamis, disrupted public transportation and destroyed about 515 houses. It also resulted in widespread power failures and cuts in water supplies, as strong aftershocks continued in the area. The four women and three men who died all lived in Niigata Prefecture and were in their 70s and 80s.
Four of the seven nuclear reactors at Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s Kashiwazaki–Kariwa nuclear plant in Niigata Prefecture which were operating at the time of the earthquake and automatically shut down following the quake.
But an electric transformer outside one of the reactors caught fire at around 10:30 a.m. The fire was extinguished about one and a half hours later. No radioactive leakage has been detected.
