Rare Ground Rupture Caught on Camera in Kumamoto Quake

Kumamoto, Aug. 24 (Jiji Press)–A security camera in Kumamoto Prefecture has filmed the moment an earthquake in the southwestern Japan prefecture caused the ground to rupture and rise, marking only the second time in the world the phenomenon has been confirmed on video. The footage is “extremely valuable for analyzing the mechanism of earthquakes,” Ryusuke Imura, an associate professor of geology at Kagoshima University, said. The video was taken in the city of Yatsushiro, where the 7.1-magnitude July 28 quake recorded a seismic intensity of upper 6, the second-highest level on the Japanese scale, with about 2,500 buildings damaged. It shows a rice paddy and nearby houses rising a few seconds after the shaking began. Imura said that the vertical and horizontal displacement of the fault at the site where the footage was taken totaled roughly 1.2 meters. “We can visually observe the mechanism in which seismic waves arrive first and fault slips appear on the surface a few seconds later,” the associate professor said. Imura emphasized that shifts in the ground surface above and around active faults can cause significant damage to buildings, making the footage valuable for disaster prevention. The first confirmed video of the ground rising due to an earthquake was recorded in Myanmar in 2025. While similar videos may have been recorded as security and dashboard cameras have become more widespread, such devices often record over older data after a certain period, making the footage difficult to retrieve. “If there is footage capturing fault offsets, we ask that people save it and share it with us,” Imura said. The Kumamoto footage was posted on social media by a 46-year-old man from Yatsushiro after he found it on a security camera at a store run by his younger brother. The post was viewed about 4 million times in a week. “I was surprised that (the post) was viewed more widely than I expected,” the man said. “I’m happy if it’s useful for research.” END [Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]