Yesterday evening at 9:26 pm a major earthquake hit Kumamoto with the force of a shindo 7, with a Magnitude of 6.5, and left several dead and many more injured.

This morning at least 9 deaths and 760 injuries have been confirmed but more are suspected. At least 20 buildings have been destroyed and it is assumed, that under the rubble there might be still people trapped. More than 44.000 people have been evacuated. After the earthquake hit a tsunami warning was issued but fortunately shortly after no risk of a tsunami was reported.

There were plenty of aftershocks and as @ourjapanblog reported on twitter, they had 18 earthquakes in the last 24 hours. All of them a 3 or higher on the scale.

While it is not unusual to see earthquake warnings pop up on the screen while watching TV, it has been a while that the running program was interrupted for a news reporting. The last year had a series of earthquakes with a 4 or weak 5 and with a force like this everything starts shaking. I cannot imagine what a 7 must feel like and our thoughts are with the people in and around Kumamoto.

The video below shows some of the damage that could already be seen yesterday evening: