5.6-mag Okla. quake rattle nerves

Oklahomans more accustomed to tornadoes than earthquakes suffered through a weekend of temblors that cracked buildings, buckled a highway and rattled nerves. One jolting quake late Saturday was the state's strongest ever and shook a college football stadium 50 miles away while another of lesser intensity struck

before dawn Sunday.

"That shook up the place, had a lot of people nervous," Oklahoma State wide receiver Justin Blackmon said of the late Saturday quake, the strongest of a series of quakes that began hours earlier. "Yeah, it was pretty strong."

A magnitude 5.6 earthquake Saturday night was centered near Sparks, 44 miles northeast of Oklahoma City, and could be felt as far away as Tennessee and Wisconsin, according to reports received by the U.S. Geological Survey. A magnitude 4.7 quake early Saturday was felt from Texas to Missouri.

The Survey said the latest quake hit at 3:39 a.m. Sunday, measuring 4.0 in magnitude and centered 36 miles east of Oklahoma City. Like Saturday night's quake, it said, the quake Sunday took place a little more than 3 miles underground.

There were no immediate reports of serious injuries or major damage from the quakes or many small aftershocks, but a number of homeowners and businesses reported cracked walls or fallen knickknacks. At Shawnee, the fire department said one spire on the administration building at St. Gregory University had been damaged and another one was leaning, according to KWTV in Oklahoma City.

"Earthquake damage in Oklahoma. That's an anomaly right there," Todd McKinsey of Moore told The Oklahoman newspaper after a magnitude 5.6 temblor centered 50 miles away left him with cracked drywall.

Oklahoma typically has about 50 earthquakes a year, and 57 tornadoes, but a swarm of quakes east of Oklahoma City contributed to a sharp increase in the number of temblors. Researchers said 1,047 quakes occurred last year, prompting them to install seismographs in the area. A cause of the uptick wasn't known.

Saturday night's earthquake jolted Oklahoma State University's stadium shortly after the No. 3 Cowboys defeated No. 17 Kansas State. The crowd of 58,895 was still leaving when it hit, and players were in the locker rooms beneath the stands at Boone Pickens Stadium.

The temblor seemed to last the better part of a minute, rippling upward to the stadium press box.

"Everybody was looking around and no one had any idea," Oklahoma State quarterback Brandon Weeden said. "We thought the people above us were doing something. I've never felt one, so that was a first."

An emergency manager in Lincoln County near the epicenter said U.S. 62, a two-lane highway that meanders through the gently rolling landscape between Oklahoma City and the Arkansas state line, crumbled in places when the stronger quake struck Saturday night. Other reports in the early hours Sunday were sketchy and mentioned cracks in some buildings and a chimney toppled.

The magnitude 4.7 earthquake that struck the area early Saturday — and a number of aftershocks following both large quakes — rattled homes and businesses, but emergency officials said no injuries were reported and that there had been no immediate reports of major damages.

"Nothing is destroyed or anything like that," Prague City Police Department dispatcher Claudie Morton told the Tulsa World after the Saturday morning quakes.

But authorities said they would need to await daybreak for better light to assess any damages from the later, more powerful quake.

Hours before dawn on Sunday, the latest quake set nerves on edge anew.

At the Prague Community Hospital in the region, registered nurse Jessie Plumb said no injured people had come into the emergency room after the late Saturday quake. But she said she and other hospital staffers felt the 4.0 magnitude quake early Sunday while on the second floor of the building.

"It kind of gave a little bit of a shake, a little bit of rock `n roll," she told The Associated Press by phone. "I would say it was 20 or 25 seconds." She said she worried because of the number of quakes and the intensity.

Saturday's late-night quake was slightly less in intensity than a temblor that rattled the East Coast on Aug. 23. That 5.8 magnitude earthquake was centered in Virginia and was felt from Georgia to Canada. No major damage was reported, although cracks appeared in the Washington Monument, the National Cathedral suffered costly damage to sculpted stonework, and a number of federal buildings were evacuated.

If the 5.6 magnitude from Saturday's late quake is confirmed, it would be Oklahoma's strongest. USGS records show that a 5.5 magnitude earthquake struck El Reno, just west of Oklahoma City, in 1952 and, before Oklahoma became a state in 1907, a quake of similar magnitude 5.5 struck in northeastern Indian Territory in 1882.

"Oh, man. I've never felt anything like that in my life," Morton told the Tulsa newspaper. "It was the scariest thing. I had a police officer just come in and sit down and all the sudden the walls started shaking and the windows were rattling. It felt like the roof was going to come off the police department."

Morton said the office was flooded with calls, but no one reported any severe injuries or damage. She said residents told her that picture frames and mirrors fell from walls and broke, drawers worked loose from dressers and objects tumbled out of cabinets.

"We do have several damaged buildings downtown, but it's just cracks and things like that," Morton said.

Oklahoma Geological Survey researcher Austin Holland told Oklahoma City television station KOTV that the earthquake and aftershocks occurred on a known fault line.

Residents in Prague and Sparks felt an intense shaking, but for those farther away the quake was more of a dull rumble, he said.

"It shakes much more rapidly when you're closer to it," he said. "Because it's a large earthquake, it's going to rumble for a while."

Small tsunami reaches Japan after major quake

TOKYO — Small tsunami waves reached the Pacific coast of northern Japan Sunday after a major quake hit the region heavily damaged by the March earthquake and tsunami, the Japan Meteorological Agency said.
The port towns of Soma and Ofunato saw 10-centimetre (four-inch) tsunami waves triggered by

the 7.3-magnitude earthquake that struck off the main island of Honshu at 9:57 am (0057 GMT), the agency said.
No damage has been reported from the tsunami and quake, which was strong enough to sway skyscrapers in Tokyo, some 400 kilometres from the epicentre.
The Japanese agency and the US Geological Survey originally estimated the quake's magnitude at 7.1, hitting the same general area as the 9.0-magnitude quake of March 11 which triggered a massive tsunami.
While Japan upgraded the quake to 7.3, the US agency revised it down to 7.0, centred 212 kilometres (131 miles) east of Sendai city, Miyagi prefecture, at a depth of 34.9 kilometres.
The Japanese agency lifted the tsunami advisory at 11:45 am.
"Changes in sea level may occur for the next few hours. Please use caution when conducting activities near the ocean, such as swimming and surf fishing," a Japanese weather agency official told a news briefing.
Television footage of Ofunato and Soma did not show any visible sign of the tsunami, with the water surface seemingly calm and flat.
Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) said the latest quake did not cause fresh problems at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi (number one) nuclear plant and the nearby Fukushima Daini (number two) plant.
"We have received reports that there has been no significant impact at the Fukushima Daiichi and the Fukushima Daini nuclear plants," a TEPCO spokesman told a news conference.
Cooling of crippled reactors at Fukushima Daiichi continued, although the company told work crews near the water to seek higher ground during the tsunami advisory.
The Japanese weather agency originally expected a small tsunami of up to 50 centimetres (20 inches) along the affected region.
Communities along the Pacific coast issued warnings and advisories for local residents to seek higher ground or to leave areas near the water.
"For a second, I thought maybe another big one will come," a middle-aged man in coastal Kesennuma, Miyagi, told national broadcaster NHK.
The devastating March 11 and tsunami left about 22,000 people dead or missing and triggered an atomic crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.

More quakes rattle northeastern Japan

A fresh round of tremors, including one with a magnitude of 6.3, shook northern Japan on Tuesday afternoon, the Japan Meteorological Agency reported.

The quake was centered in Fukushima Prefecture, near Japan's Pacific coast and about 64 kilometers (40 miles) southwest of the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Workers retreated to earthquake-resistant shelters during the event, but there was no loss of power at the plant, the Tokyo Electric Power Company told CNN.

It followed a magnitude-6.4 quake Tuesday morning that killed at least six people when it triggered a landslide in Iwaki, north of Tokyo.

The earlier quake buried three homes, the Iwaki fire department said. Three people were rescued and hospitalized, and fire officials were working to rescue an unknown number of others believed to be trapped, the department said.

The quake struck at about 8:08 a.m. Tuesday (7:08 p.m. Monday ET), according to the U.S. Geological Survey. It had a depth of about 13 kilometers (8 miles) and was centered about 77 miles east-southeast of Tokyo.

Monday night, one person was killed in Iwaki and several others were trapped when a powerful 6.6-magnitude earthquake triggered landslides there, the fire department said. It happened exactly one month after the country's devastating 9.0-magnitude quake and tsunami.

Since the March 11 disaster, there have been more than 400 aftershocks of magnitude 6.0 or greater.

The earlier quake was centered about 100 miles (164 kilometers) northeast of Tokyo and about 30 miles (50 kilometers) southwest of the nuclear facility, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

The landslides in Iwaki buried three houses. Police in Fukushima Prefecture initially reported that four people were trapped. The Iwaki Fire Department later said more than four people were trapped, but the exact number was unclear.

Another 200 bodies found in quake-hit coastal areas (Photos)

Police in Japan said Sunday they have found another 200 bodies in the quake-ravaged coastal areas of the north.
Police officials in Miyagi told the Associated Press that authorities were recovering the bodies, but did not provide further details and declined to be identified, citing departmental policy.
Meanwhile, Japan's Meteorological Agency has upgraded the magnitude of Friday's quake to 9.0 after analyzing seismic waves. The agency earlier measured it at 8.8 magnitude.
The quake was the biggest to hit Japan since record-keeping began in the late 1800s. The agency warned Sunday of more strong aftershocks after Friday's quake which unleashed massive tsunamis and killed at least 763 people -- with estimates nearing the 1,700 mark.
The U.S. Geological Survey has measured the quake at magnitude 8.9, and that number remained unchanged Sunday.
Rescue and recovery
The Japanese government increased the number of troops dedicated to rescue and recovery operations from 51,000 to about 100,000.
Around 10,000 people are still unaccounted for in the Japanese port town of Minamisanriku which was virtually obliterated after the quake and tsunami. Large areas of the countryside were surrounded by water and unreachable.
Rescue teams searched for missing people along hundreds of kilometres of the Japanese coast. At least a million households are still without water and some 2.5 million households don't have electricity.
Meanwhile, strong aftershocks continued Sunday, including one with a magnitude of 6.2 that originated in the sea, about 179 kilometres east of Tokyo.