TOKYO — Prime Minister Fumio Kishida of Japan said on Thursday that the country’s Self-Defense Forces have been mobilized to assess the damage after the strong earthquake that hit off the northern coast of the country left about two million people without power.
“We are still trying to understand the situation and collect information,” he said at a news briefing. “The government will come together to save people’s lives and to make all-out efforts to provide safety and provide accurate information.”
A tsunami advisory remained in place for Fukushima and Miyagi prefectures. A small tsunami of 20 centimeters, about eight inches, hit Miyagi’s Ishinomaki Port at 12:30 a.m. on Thursday, according to NHK, the public broadcaster.
The tsunami warning center in the United States said there was no tsunami danger for the U.S. West Coast, British Columbia and Alaska.
The Tokyo Electric Power Company, known as Tepco, said that of the households without power, close to 700,000 were in Tokyo. Japan Rail East, a main network, has suspended most of its train lines.
Tepco is inspecting nuclear power plants, including the Fukushima Daiichi plant that melted down 11 years ago when a powerful wall of water that followed a devastating earthquake knocked out the reactors’ cooling systems.
Japan’s Nuclear Regulation Authority said that so far it had detected no abnormalities at power plants in Fukushima, Onagawa and Tokai. But it added that it was conducting further inspections of the Fukushima plant.
