Ground in Kumamoto City Moves 84 Centimeters in Quake

Tokyo, July 29 (Jiji Press)–The Geospatial Information Authority of Japan has said the ground surface in the city of Yatsushiro in Kumamoto Prefecture moved about 84 centimeters in a northeasterly direction following Tuesday’s strong earthquake that rocked the southwestern Japan prefecture. The institution has set GPS-based control stations at around 1,300 locations nationwide to monitor crustal movements. During powerful earthquakes that struck the same prefecture in April 2016, the ground in the village of Minamiaso moved about 97 centimeters. Following Tuesday’s temblor, which registered a maximum intensity of 7, the highest level on the Japanese seismic scale, a control station in Yatsushiro recorded a ground shift of 84 centimeters and sank around 30 centimeters. Another station in the city moved south by about 17 centimeters and a station in the city of Kumamoto, the capital of the prefecture, moved about 40 centimeters to the north. Calculations based on ground movements at such observation points showed that the fault at which the quake occurred is estimated to be about 29 kilometers long and 6.3 km wide, and believed to have moved approximately 2 meters. Analysis of radar images taken by the Daichi-2 observation satellite of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, or JAXA, showed movements of up to 50 centimeters in the northwestern part of the Hinagu fault zone, located near the focus of the quake, and up to 10 centimeters in the southeastern part. END [Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]