Trains were stopped over much of northeastern Japan on Sunday after more than 100 people were injured in an earthquake that resembled an aftershock from the devastating earthquake that hit the area in 2011.
The magnitude 7.3 earthquake struck shortly before midnight on Saturday, breaking walls, shattered windows and triggering a landslide in Fukushima, the area closest to the epicenter.
The Japan Meteorological Agency said the earthquake was believed to be an aftershock of the magnitude 9.0 March 11, 2011 earthquake that triggered a tsunami and the world’s worst nuclear accident in 25 years. The agency warned of aftershocks for several days.
The earthquake shook buildings in the Japanese capital Tokyo hundreds of miles away.
Although hundreds of thousands of buildings lost electricity just after the earthquake, which hit at 11:08 p.m. local time (1408 GMT), power was restored on most Sunday mornings.
However, several thousand households were without water and residents lined up with plastic jugs to get water from trucks.
The power outage did not affect the Pfizer Inc COVID-19 vaccines arriving Friday for vaccinations starting this week, Cabinet Secretary Katsunobu Kato told a news conference Sunday morning.
At least 104 people were injured, NHK national television said, including several who suffered fractures, but no deaths were reported.
There was no tsunami and no reports of irregularities at nuclear power plants. NHK reported that approximately 160 ml (5 ounces) of water had leaked from a spent fuel pool at the Fukushima Dai-Ni reactor, but this was not dangerous.