JAPAN’S Meteorological Agency (JMA) has apologised after mistakenly issuing an alert for a 9.9-magnitude earthquake, triggering emergency alarms on millions of mobile phones before the warning was withdrawn minutes later.
The alert, issued on Friday, said the earthquake had occurred near the Kuril Islands, known in Japan as the Chishima Islands.
The agency later clarified that the actual earthquake measured 6.9 in magnitude and struck near Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula at a depth of 160km shortly after noon.
JMA official Shinya Tsukada apologised for the disruption and anxiety caused by the erroneous warning.
“We sincerely apologise for the great inconvenience and anxiety caused to the public,” he told reporters.
Although the alert did not trigger widespread panic, it temporarily disrupted public transport services.
JMA attributed the error to an anomaly in its calculation of the earthquake’s epicentre. The agency said its magnitude estimate was based on an incorrect assumption that the epicentre was about 680km farther from Japan than its actual location.
The incident has renewed attention on the accuracy of Japan’s earthquake early-warning system, which is designed to give people and transport operators time to take protective measures before strong shaking arrives.
Japan remains haunted by the magnitude-9.0 undersea earthquake in 2011, which triggered a devastating tsunami that killed or left about 18,500 people missing and caused the Fukushima nuclear disaster.
Japanese media reported that a magnitude-9.9 earthquake would release about 22 times more energy than the 2011 disaster. - October 18, 2026