Qualla: 2022 Fukushima Earthquake

2022 Fukushima Earthquake: Introduction

Tue, 17 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Theodore Xu, CC BY-SA 4.0. Residents of downtown Sendai saw the sky flash. Not lightning -- something stranger. A diffuse glow pulsed above the city at 23:36 on March 16, 2022, captured by CCTV cameras and later confirmed by researchers as an earthquake light, a rare electromagnetic phenomenon coinciding with a magnetic disturbance detected at the Kakioka geomagnetic observatory in Ibaraki Prefecture. Scientists checked maintenance reports for every nearby power station and transformer; none had malfunctioned. The light came from the earth itself, as a magnitude 7.4 earthquake ripped through a fault beneath the Pacific plate off the coast of Fukushima.

Image: Theodore Xu | CC BY-SA 4.0

2022 Fukushima Earthquake: A Seismic Triplet

Tue, 17 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Theodore Xu, CC BY-SA 4.0. Seismologists would come to categorize this earthquake as the final member of a triplet sequence stretching back more than a decade. The first event was the April 2011 Miyagi earthquake, itself an aftershock of the catastrophic March 2011 Tohoku megathrust. The second was the Feb...

Image: Theodore Xu | CC BY-SA 4.0

2022 Fukushima Earthquake: Two Million Homes in the Dark

Tue, 17 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Indiana jo, CC BY-SA 4.0. The earthquake struck at a depth of 57 kilometers, deep enough to shake the ground violently across the entire Tohoku and Kanto regions. A peak ground acceleration of 1,233 gals was recorded at Kawasaki, Miyagi. Across 13 prefectures and metropolitan Tokyo, an estimated 2.2 milli...

Image: Indiana jo | CC BY-SA 4.0

2022 Fukushima Earthquake: The Bullet Train and the Broken Road

Tue, 17 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit 番記者, CC BY-SA 4.0. A Tohoku Shinkansen train derailed near the epicenter, prompting JR East to suspend bullet train service between Nasushiobara and Morioka stations. At least 17 utility poles along the Tohoku line were severely deformed. On the Tohoku Expressway, a 100-meter-long crack opened betw...

Image: 番記者 | CC BY-SA 4.0

2022 Fukushima Earthquake: Icons Shaken

Tue, 17 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Indiana jo, CC BY-SA 4.0. In Sendai's Aoba Ward, part of the stone wall of historic Aoba Castle collapsed, and the bronze equestrian statue of Date Masamune -- the 17th-century founder of the city -- tilted sideways when its horse's leg fractured. The White Cube concert hall in Shiroishi suffered a partia...

Image: Indiana jo | CC BY-SA 4.0

2022 Fukushima Earthquake: The Toll and the Warning

Tue, 17 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Katorisi, CC BY 4.0. Four people died. A man in his 60s in Soma jumped from a window to escape. In Tome, Miyagi, a man in his 70s died of a heart attack. Across the region, 247 people were injured. Workers at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant found no new anomalies, though pumps at t...

Image: Katorisi | CC BY 4.0