Japan Meteorological Agency Retracts Warning of Huge Quake

Tokyo, Oct. 16 (Jiji Press)--The Japan Meteorological Agency on Friday canceled an emergency earthquake warning after erroneously estimating that a magnitude-9.9 earthquake had occurred in the Chishima Islands off the northernmost Japan prefecture of Hokkaido the same day.

The agency issued the erroneous warning at 12:40 p.m., predicting that Hokkaido and the Tohoku region in northeastern Japan would be hit by shaking of up to 7, the highest level of Japan's seismic intensity scale. It retracted the warning at 12:48 p.m.

An actual earthquake, which occurred near the Kamchatka Peninsula, had a magnitude of 6.9 and produced a seismic intensity of 1 in the city of Hakodate in Hokkaido.

"We deeply apologize for causing great inconvenience," Ayataka Ebita, director of the agency's Earthquake and Tsunami Observation Division, told a news conference.

He said that no external cyberattack has been confirmed and that it is highly likely that there was a problem with the processing of computer software.

[Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]