Authorities in Japan urged people to avoid hoarding as demand for disaster kits and daily necessities surged on Saturday amid concerns about a possible megaquake.
The weather agency said in its first such advisory that a major earthquake was likely after a magnitude 7.1 tremor struck the south on Thursday that injured 14 people.
A sign was put up at a Tokyo supermarket on Saturday apologising to customers for shortages of some products, citing “earthquake-related media reports” as the cause.
The sign read, “Possible sales restrictions are being put in place”, adding that bottled water was already being rationed due to “unsustainable” purchasing.
Portable toilets, preserved food and bottled water topped the list of most in-demand items on the website of Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten on Saturday morning.
Some residents in Tokyo are increasing their disaster preparedness.
Bar employee Kokoro Takeuchi said she ordered bottled water online after Thursday’s quake.
“I’m very worried,” the 27-year-old told AFP.
“The bar I work in is underground, so if there’s a sudden earthquake, there’s a good chance we might not be able to escape. So I’m trying to figure out the best way to get out of there,” she said.
But others had accepted the inevitability of a great earthquake.
“I’m worried, but thinking too much about it doesn’t achieve anything,” Mika Nakagawa, 34, who works at the company, told AFP.
“If it happens, then that’s it,” he said.
Some retailers on the Pacific Coast have also reported high demand for similar disaster-related supplies, according to local media reports.
The advisory relates to the Nankai Trough “subduction zone” between two tectonic plates in the Pacific Ocean, where major earthquakes have occurred in the past.
– low risk –
It has been the site of devastating magnitude eight or nine earthquakes every century or two, and the central government had previously predicted the next major quake would strike within the next 30 years, with a 70 percent probability.
However, experts say the risk, while increased, is still low, and the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries has urged people to “avoid excessive stockpiling of commodities”.
A magnitude 5.3 earthquake struck the Kanagawa region near Tokyo on Friday, triggering emergency alarms on mobile phones and briefly suspending bullet train operations.
Most seismologists believe that Friday’s earthquake had no direct connection to the Nankai Trough earthquake, because it occurred at a considerable distance.
On social media platform X, spam posts taking advantage of the fear of a massive earthquake are increasing rapidly.
Public broadcaster NHK said spam was being posted on X every few seconds in the name of useful tips about the earthquake, with links directing users to pornographic or e-commerce sites.
NHK said such posts were “making it harder for users to obtain real information about the earthquake”.
Situated on top of four major tectonic plates, the Japanese archipelago of 125 million experiences about 1,500 earthquakes each year, most of them minor.
A magnitude 7.6 quake and powerful tremors struck the Noto Peninsula off the Sea of Japan coast on Jan. 1, killing at least 318 people, collapsing buildings and damaging roads.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
