Hi All. I watched the quake on NHK-TV as it was occurring. I missed the first couple of seconds as it took the station a couple of seconds to switch to their office in Hokkaido. The shaking at the office was equivalent to about an M>6.0 quake. Saw the strongest aftershock. It was much less then the main event in terms of shaking. That quake is being listed as M>7.0 by USGS.

The quake centered off the coast just south of Hokkaido in the Tsushima Straits. The city of Kushiro seems to have received most the damage. However this is still preliminary. From what I could see on the map it appears that almost all of Hokkaido felt the quake with parts on northern Honshu feeling it.

Have been watching the Japan News for close to 4 hours now. No deaths have been report with about 120 injuries so far.

There was a fire at an oil storage depot, but it only involved one storage tank.

USGS is showing the quake with a preliminary magnitude of M>8.0. Japan is listing it as M>7.8. Will have to wait a couple of days to get the correct magnitude.

Damage was described as light to moderate. Didn’t see anything in the way of collapsed buildings, but some false ceilings in some of the buildings did come down. Most of the damage was confined to things walling from outside walls and shelves inside stores.

There were some landslides, which did cause a train derailment. This appears to be where most of the injuries were.

There was a tsunami warring for all of the SE coast of Hokkaido. There was a 1-meter (3.2feet) tsunami about 30 minutes after the quake. There was a 1.3-meter (4 feet) tsunami about 11/2 hours later. There were some fishing boats carried a couple of yards up the beach. No major damage caused by the tsunami was reported.

No warning was given for this quake.

The M>3.5 quake in the Hollister area woke me up just enough so that I knew we had a quake. Rolled over and went back to sleep. It occurred 3 miles south of Hollister on the Calaveras Fault with a slight chance that it occurred on the Paicines Fault.

All in all this has been an interesting day. I get to feel a quake, and then get to watch one as it is occurring. Take Care…Don in creepy town