A 7.1-magnitude earthquake struck Japan's Kumamoto prefecture on the southern island of Kyushu at 4:27 p.m. local time Tuesday, collapsing part of a shopping mall, derailing a high-speed train, and triggering a tsunami warning that was later lifted.
A separate high-speed train derailed in the town of Yatsushiro, and a smokestack collapsed at a Nippon Paper factory with workers reported missing there as well, making Tuesday's quake a multi-site disaster rather than one contained to a single collapsed building.
Tuesday's reading makes it six, and the second time Kumamoto specifically has registered the top classification in a decade, a repeat that is now the closest point of comparison for how badly this quake might ultimately damage the region.
At a Nippon Paper factory, a large smokestack collapsed during the shaking, and workers at the site were reported missing as of Tuesday evening, though the company had not released further detail on the number affected.
A tsunami warning was issued for coastal areas near the epicenter in the earthquake's immediate aftermath and lifted several hours later without confirmed damaging waves, though officials cautioned that aftershocks large enough to generate their own localized tsunami risk remained possible in the following days.
A 7.1-magnitude earthquake collapsed part of an Aeon Mall, derailed a train, and forced Sony, Fujifilm, and TSMC to evacuate chip plants in Kumamoto, Japan, the same region hit by a deadly 2016 quake, and a reminder of the historical tsunami record tying Japan directly to Washington's own overdue Cascadia rupture.