- 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]
On 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.
Japan itself is involved with a lot of the R&D, the factories are there because of that and because of major buyers also being there. It’s not like we’re going to evacuate the hundred million plus of Japan.
This 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://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38835419).
It 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.
The 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.
In 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.
NHK 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.
I'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.
Kumamoto 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.
It'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.
I 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.
No 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
I 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.
To 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:
I'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.
I 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!
Fukuoka 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
I’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?
I just find it lazy to continuously use climate change (one which we aren't allowed to offer or discuss any alternative theories) to explain away everything. It fits the pattern of late, recently from a certain political movement.
Found 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
Given 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.
Every 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.
And 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.
Many 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
One thing I've noticed is that people in Fukuoka have stayed calm. I haven't seen panic buying of food or emergency supplies despite being so close to the disaster area.
Not 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.
Earthquake 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.
There'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.
Like half of the buildings are non-resistant since they are old and made of wood. IIRC only buildings built after 1991 are guaranteed to be earthquake resistant.
Hope 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.
Why 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.
I live in an earthquake prone area and thought Japan was cutting edge in earthquake protection. Beyond the obvious concern for other human beings, I am interested in why there was so much damage from what I would have thought was still a relatively manageable size earthquake for them. I am here trying to learn a lesson that I would not expect to learn from Venezuelan infrastructure and earthquake response.
It is also the timing of building booms. Problems being exposed have triggered regulations and enforcement in Venezuela but that is relatively recent and much inventory was built decades before.
The speed of videos coming out was a little slower so it lost the HN attention span - but it was definitely a hot topic in many other news places - Reddit, X, etc...
Haven'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
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.
1: https://news.web.nhk/newsweb/na/na-k10015188641000 2: https://news.web.nhk/newsweb/na/na-k10015188611000 3: https://news.web.nhk/newsweb/na/na-k10015188721000 4: https://news.web.nhk/newsweb/na/na-k10015188691000 5: https://www.nikkei.com/article/DGXZQOGM287FG0Y6A720C2000000/ 6: https://www.data.jma.go.jp/multi/quake/quake_detail.html?eve... 7: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Kumamoto_earthquakes?uses... 8: https://search.yahoo.co.jp/realtime/search/tweet/20820057608...
On 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/55a0a3ebb9d0087ae8492ce85c...
> 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.
Japan itself is involved with a lot of the R&D, the factories are there because of that and because of major buyers also being there. It’s not like we’re going to evacuate the hundred million plus of Japan.
It's a major reason why Arizona was selected for a US site.
This 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://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38835419).
It 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.
The 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.
You can keep an eye on this english tracker in the browser too https://earthquakesjapan.com
Get the app
Somewhat unrelated but how did you find the process of moving to Japan (assuming you emigrated there)
In 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/jishin...
NHK 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.
I at least can see English translated version of NHK here https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/live_tv/
There is a collapsed roof of a shopping centre as well in Kumamoto. The Aeon Mall.
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English link on the shindo scale: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan_Meteorological_Agency_se...
I'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.
Glad to hear it is not too terrible where you are
Hope the areas around you were just as lucky, thanks for the update!
Kumamoto 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.
It'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.
I 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.
No 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
GPS reference data shows the ground has been displaced as much as 84 centimeters https://news.web.nhk/newsweb/na/na-k10015189191000
I 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.
To 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
And Nankai megathrust earthquakes are those caused by plate movement there:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nankai_megathrust_earthquakes
Statistically major earthquakes occur here every 90-200 years, and the last was in 1946.
I'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.
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Similar strength and location as the 2016 one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Kumamoto_earthquakes
I 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!
Fukuoka 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
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I’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?
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I just find it lazy to continuously use climate change (one which we aren't allowed to offer or discuss any alternative theories) to explain away everything. It fits the pattern of late, recently from a certain political movement.
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Was looking at webcams here (https://tokyo.fyi) but realized this is further south.
Found 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
Some 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.
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Does anyone know if this also affects South Korea?
Given 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.
Dishes may rattle feels like such a japanese way to describe it
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Every 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.
Never felt anything in SK
Thank you for this update.
I was told that some people in Busan, the Korean city nearest to Japan, felt the earthquake and even felt dizzy.
I'm in Busan, though I didn't feel anything. (I was on the beach at the time though.)
And 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.
Many 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
I'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.
One thing I've noticed is that people in Fukuoka have stayed calm. I haven't seen panic buying of food or emergency supplies despite being so close to the disaster area.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixEhLWGJE4M
https://edition.cnn.com/2026/07/28/asia/japan-earthquake-int... for some Reuters reporting.
It’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.
arent they trying to make silicon fabs there?
Not 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.
Earthquake 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
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South 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.
This was felt in Shanghai, like a truck passing by. The second one in two months?
United States Geological Survey 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
The HNK stream can also be viewed at https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/live_tv/ with English dubs. The youtube feed looks to have stopped for now.
It is currently summer vacation season in Japan, so we expect there to be many tourists. We hope everyone stays safe.
7.1 seems to mean non resistant buildings may collapse.
Yea seems pretty bad given its on the higher end of the scale... I might be naive but I hope nobody died
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.
It's Japan though. They don't have non-resistant buildings.
There'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.
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Like half of the buildings are non-resistant since they are old and made of wood. IIRC only buildings built after 1991 are guaranteed to be earthquake resistant.
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Man, why are the beautiful places of this world so much at constant risk :(
There's this burning Ring of Fire....
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_of_Fire>
also earth quake in china.
Hope 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.
It is very sad
For 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."
bless them
Why 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
Venezuela's own choices.
https://rsf.org/en/venezuela-censorship-exacerbates-earthqua...
If anything that should warrant more attention...
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I live in an earthquake prone area and thought Japan was cutting edge in earthquake protection. Beyond the obvious concern for other human beings, I am interested in why there was so much damage from what I would have thought was still a relatively manageable size earthquake for them. I am here trying to learn a lesson that I would not expect to learn from Venezuelan infrastructure and earthquake response.
It is also the timing of building booms. Problems being exposed have triggered regulations and enforcement in Venezuela but that is relatively recent and much inventory was built decades before.
The speed of videos coming out was a little slower so it lost the HN attention span - but it was definitely a hot topic in many other news places - Reddit, X, etc...
thoughts and prayers
Shit hope everyone is ok.
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Tldr; Seems like major cities didn't get hit by the earthquake at 7 scale.
Hoping for zero casualities.
Apparently there is a risk for tsunami so Japanese govt has issued a further alert. Hope it isn't anything too bad either
Haven'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
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It may not affects me personally but i'm still interested in the topic and the discussions it generates.
what if you have family there ...
you will hear about it from them, no one is going to news.ycombinator.com to find out the latest safety information
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I just like any new bing thing happening.
We had:
The Pride attack in Germany
The knfie stabbing in Paris
and now this
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ohh. what was the intensity?
8 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.
I'm sure everyone in the hospital and with collapsed houses would agree with your assessment that it's not a big deal.
Okay. 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.
273 people died from a 7.0 earthquake in Kumamoto in 2016.
The HN audience decides what is top news of the day, that’s the whole principle this website is based upon