Fear of a massive earthquake: Japan wants to stop panic buying

At a supermarket in the capital Tokyo, signs were posted asking customers to apologise for goods lost “due to media coverage of the earthquake”. “Possible purchase restrictions are being prepared,” the sign read. That’s already the case with water bottles.

The website of Japanese electronics retailer Rakuten showed that portable toilets, non-perishable food and bottled water were the most sought-after items on Saturday morning. Some traders along the Pacific coast also reported similarly high demand, according to local media reports. The Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries therefore called on people “not to over-stock up on goods.”

“The probability is higher than usual”

Japan’s meteorological agency warned of another, stronger quake after a magnitude-7.1 earthquake struck the southern island of Kyushu on Thursday, the first such alert since the agency established a new warning system following the 2011 earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster.

JMA experts said in their “Super Earthquake Warning” on Friday that “the possibility of a new large earthquake is higher than usual, but this does not indicate that a large earthquake will definitely occur in any particular period.” A 7.1-magnitude earthquake struck Kyushu Island in southern Japan. If a new strong earthquake occurs, it will bring strong shaking and tsunamis.

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida subsequently canceled his overseas trip. The government has previously predicted that the probability of a major earthquake of magnitude 8 or 9 or above occurring in the Nankai Trench in the next 30 years is about 70%. In the worst case scenario, experts estimate that 300,000 people could die. Infrastructure would be destroyed and the losses would be huge.

Once a century

The Nankai Trench stretches about 800 kilometers along the Pacific coast to the Shizuoka region southwest of the capital Tokyo. Once a century, an earthquake of magnitude 8 or 9 is recorded in the area.

These mega-quakes, which usually strike twice at a time, have been known to trigger dangerous tsunamis off Japan’s southern coast. However, experts are now stressing that while the risk of a strong earthquake is currently higher, it is still low. On Friday, a magnitude 5.3 earthquake struck the Tokyo area.

Japan, a country of 125 million inhabitants located in one of the most tectonically active regions in the world, has strict building codes designed to ensure that structures can withstand strong earthquakes. The island nation is hit by about 1,500 earthquakes each year, most of which are relatively minor.

Geologist: “Terrible”

“Nankai has a frightening history of large earthquakes,” wrote geologists Kyle Bradley and Judith Hubbard. While earthquakes cannot be predicted, “the occurrence of one earthquake generally increases the likelihood of a second one,” they said.

“The future Nankai earthquake is undoubtedly the longest-awaited earthquake in history – it meets the definition of a ‘big earthquake’ Bradley and Hubbard point to the experience of their home country when assessing the current risk: “There is a rule of thumb in California that every earthquake has a 5% chance of being a precursor to a subsequent large earthquake.