2004 Chūetsu earthquake

Template: Infobox earthquake / Maintenance / tsunami missing template: Infobox earthquake / maintenance / property missing

(10 km north of Tokamachi )

The Chuetsu Earthquake of 2004 (Japanese平 成16年(2004年)新泻 県 中 越 地震, Heisei 16 functions ( 2004 functions) Niigata-ken Chuetsu Jishin ) was a strong earthquake with moment magnitude ( MW) of 6.8 and occurred on 23 October 2004 at 17:56 local time clock in the district of Niigata Prefecture Chuetsu the.

The hypocenter was located in 16 km depth about 10 km north of the city Tokamachi. Only 16 minutes later, at 18:12 clock, followed by an aftershock of magnitude 6.1, at 19:46 clock one of magnitude 6.4 with a much higher hypocenter (10 km depth) directly under the central city Ojiya. The quake killed at least 40 people dead and 3183 injured. In the prefecture of Niigata 6,000 houses were destroyed or damaged, a high-speed train derailed.

Shinkansen derailment

During the Chuetsu earthquake in 2004 it came to the so far only derailment of a Shinkansen high-speed train in passenger service. Eight of the 10 cars of the train of the 200 series of Toki connection jumped between the Nagaoka stations and Urasa off the rails. Thanks to the automatically initiated emergency braking by detecting the first tremors, arrived at the derailment none of the 155 passengers injured.

The track remained until December 27, 2004 out of service.