Ishikawa Faces Continued Quake Risks, Weather Agency Says

Japan’s Meteorological Agency is warning that Ishikawa Prefecture faces the possibility of more new earthquakes for a week after Friday’s strong tremor.

The officials also said heavy rain expected in the region through Sunday raises landslide risks.

The magnitude 6.5 quake struck the northern tip of the prefecture’s Noto Peninsula around 2:42 p.m. The temblor registered an upper 6 on the Japanese seismic scale of zero to 7 in the city of Suzu.

A second tremor was measured at 5.9 before 10 p.m. and registered an upper 5 on the Japanese scale in Suzu.

Quakes registering one or higher on the scale occurred in Noto Peninsula 43 times on Friday, which was the most in the series of seismic activity since 2020.

Such quakes happened nine times by 9 a.m. on Saturday. None had been recorded since then, as of 6 p.m. Saturday.

Weather officials say quakes that people cannot feel are continuing, and those registering up to upper 6 on the Japanese scale may occur over the next week.

They also say the region could have total rainfall of 120 millimeters in the 24-hour period through Sunday evening, and 50 to 100 millimeters in the 24-hour period through Monday evening.

Suzu City issued an evacuation order to 740 families, or 1,630 people, living in the city’s landslide caution zones.

The warning is at level-four, or the second highest on a scale of five, and city officials are calling on all residents in those zones to evacuate from dangerous places.