Japan holds massive anti-quake drill

A grim-faced Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi told a news conference Thursday that massive damage had been inflicted by an earthquake that struck Tokyo earlier that morning.

But this time, it was just a drill.

The mock news conference was part of annual disaster drills that mobilized more than a million people around Japan, one of the world's most earthquake-prone nations, on the anniversary of a 7.9 magnitude earthquake in 1923 that killed 140,000 and left Tokyo in ruins.

Japan accounts for about 20 per cent of the world's earthquakes of magnitude 6 or greater, with 10 such quakes hitting the country so far this year.

Researchers said the frequent quakes did not necessarily mean that Japan had entered a more seismically active period.

"It only seems as if there are more earthquakes," said Kazuhide Obara, a researcher at the National Research Institute for Earth Science and Disaster Prevention, noting an increase in monitoring stations meant quakes that once might have been missed were now being detected.

"There are always earthquakes here. Nothing in the activity suggests anything abnormal," he added.

But many believe it is only a matter of time before Tokyo, capital of the world's second-largest economy, is hit by another devastating earthquake one that many experts warn may be overdue.

In a grim reminder of its vulnerability, Tokyo was shaken in July by a 6.0 magnitude earthquake. Only a handful of people were injured, but hundreds were trapped in elevators and transportation networks were snarled for hours.

A government disaster prevention panel that examined scenarios for Tokyo said in February the capital could suffer damage of around US$1 trillion and 13,000 deaths if struck by a 7.0 magnitude earthquake.

"Predicting earthquakes, especially for Tokyo, is extremely difficult," Obara said.

The drills, which came less than a year after a 6.8 magnitude earthquake killed some 40 people in the northern Niigata region and left more than 3,000 injured, took place amid an atmosphere of renewed urgency.

In Shizuoka, some 150 kilometres west of Tokyo, the drills included responding to a tsunami touched off by an earthquake, similar to the one that struck the Indian Ocean on December 26 and.

Koizumi's early morning announcement was based on a scenario in which an earthquake struck directly beneath Tokyo with a 7.3 magnitude, a level identical to a quake that hit the city of Kobe in January 1995 that killed more than 6,400 people. Rescue workers rappelled down the side of skyscrapers, helicopters lifted people from rivers, and fire trucks were mobilised to take people from the roof of a high-rise building.

Source: China Daily