Strong Quake Hits Northern Japan

At Least 60 Injured; 4-Inch Tidal Surge Hits Northeast Coast

(CBS/AP)  A powerful magnitude 7.2 earthquake struck northeastern Japan on Tuesday and injured at least 60 people, triggering a small tsunami, sending debris crashing into a crowded swimming pool and shaking skyscrapers as far away as Tokyo.

The trembler halted bullet trains and temporarily closed highways and airports. The most serious injuries were to swimmers trapped when a roof collapsed on the indoor pool. Still, for all its power, this earthquake spared most of Japan a serious punch, reports CBS News reporter Lucy Craft.

More than 200 people, many of them children on summer vacation, were in that indoor pool in coastal Sendai city when the quake showered tiles and metal onto them, injuring 17, officials said.

Tumbling rocks and roof tiles hurt others elsewhere. TV news footage showed a collapsed house outside Tokyo and landslides in the quake-hit area, 185 miles north of the capital. An area police spokesman said an 80-year-old woman was trapped and later rescued.

"The shaking felt like it lasted forever. It was scary thinking when it was going to end and what was going to happen," said Sendai city official Yoji Kimura.

National broadcaster NHK said about 60 people were reported injured. Officials were still tallying figures, but police in Miyagi prefecture, which bore the worst of the quake, could only confirm 26 injuries. Neighboring Fukushima prefecture reported four.

"The horizontal shaking was very strong, so much so that I almost couldn't remain standing," said Masami Oshima, an official with Miyagi prefecture, of which Sendai is the capital.

The quake knocked out power to about 17,000 households, while high-speed train services in the north were suspended and flights temporarily grounded at Tokyo's Haneda airport. Nippon Oil shut a Sendai refinery.

"I thought my tires had punctured ... the jolt was long and slow," Shinji Abe, a taxi driver in Shiogama, outside Sendai, told Kyodo News agency. "People were running out of buildings."