Japan Avoids Damage in 6.8 Earthquake
Video shows Tokyo rattled, but no tsunami or deaths from undersea quake.
| Posted Sunday, Jan. 1, 2012, at 1:36 PM
Photo by Jiji Press/AFP/Getty Images.
The new year dawned in Japan with another earthquake.
A 6.8 earthquake rattled Tokyo and other cities on Sunday, but not enough to cause major damage.
The quake’s epicenter was some 200 miles under the sea, near an island about 300 miles southwest of Tokyo, the U.S. Geological Survey reports. It hit at around 2:30 p.m. local time, or just after midnight Eastern time.
There was no tsunami alert this time, good news for a country still recovering from a 9.0 quake last spring that killed over 20,000 and damaged the country’s nuclear power facilities. A recent study estimated the cleanup of the Fukushima plant could take up to 40 years, the Associated Press reported.
ITN News has some shaky footage of Sunday’s quake, embedded below.
