Japan's Weather Agency Apologises After Mistakenly Issuing a Magnitude 9.9 Quake Warning
Japan's Meteorological Agency issued an erroneous emergency earthquake warning on October 16 after its system miscalculated a magnitude 6.9 earthquake near Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula as a magnitude 9.9 event. The agency withdrew the warning about eight minutes later, apologised, and began investigating the error.
The actual quake struck at 12:38 p.m. local time at a depth of around 160 kilometres. During processing, the early warning system misplaced the epicentre in the Kuril Islands and inflated the magnitude. The warning, issued at 12:40 p.m. for a wide area from Hokkaido to the Chubu region including Tokyo, forecast shaking of up to 7 on Japan's seismic intensity scale; the strongest shaking actually observed was an intensity of 1 in Hakodate, and there was no tsunami risk.
Tokaido Shinkansen bullet trains were temporarily suspended between Shin-Yokohama and Toyohashi before services resumed. Processing records published by the agency showed the system's magnitude estimate climbed from 7.3 to 9.9 before the alert was issued. The waters off northern Japan, along the Japan Trench and Chishima Trench, are an area where the agency has long urged residents to prepare for a possible megaquake. Japanese media reported it was the first time an emergency earthquake warning had ever been withdrawn.
Source: GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 图：停靠在京都站的东海道新干线列车。图片来源：Ravi Dwivedi，CC BY-SA 4.0。Photo: A Tokaido Shinkansen train at Kyoto Station. Image: Ravi Dwivedi, CC BY-SA 4.0.
