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Tokyo Olympics Shaken But Not Stirred By 5.8 Earthquake & Aftershocks

Erik Pedersen
·3 min read

Is nature conspiring against the Tokyo Olympics? First the event was postponed by the Covid pandemic. Then, as the games went on despite a widespread resurgence of the virus, a typhoon hit the Japanese capital last week. Temperatures and humidity have been uncomfortably high, and today the region was hit by a magnitude 5.8 earthquake and several aftershocks.

Memo to Mount Fuji: Stay cool, please.

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No event disruptions or major damage has been reported from any of the offshore quakes, which ranged from magnitude 4.1 to 5.8, and local authorities have ruled out a tsunami threat to the city that’s part of the notorious “Ring of Fire.” But media types in town to cover the Games of the XXXII Olympiad weighed in on social media about the shaking that was reported at about 5:33 a.m. Wednesday local time.

“Rolled for a good 20 seconds,” NBC News anchor Lester Holt tweeted. “Interestingly my crew 3 floors below me felt nothing.” CNN’s Will Ripley wrote: “I’ve felt the shaking for about 30 seconds. Still going.”

Sunrise, a local morning show on Australia’s Seven Network, was just going live from Tokyo after a commercial break when the main quake hit. But announcer Mark Beretta was, well, unmoved. “We’re about 10 stories up,” he told the anchors. “We’re in a tower that at home would be made by scaffolding, but here’s it’s made of construction steel because it is earthquake-proof. But it started to actually rock and move.”

Beretta kept his cool, despite noting that it was his first earthquake. Below is the show’s tweet, followed by those from Holt, Ripley and others including a local Toledo, OH, reporter who joked about the quake’s unnatural origin.

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