Kirk here with some information about the earthquake warning that woke me up this morning at about 5 AM. I got this huge warning but couldn’t feel anything. I ignored it and went back to sleep, assuming it was some kind of false alarm. Well, for my neck of the woods (central Kumamoto City) it was a false alarm but folks to our southwest may have felt significant shaking.
I looked at news reports but couldn’t find anything about significant damage – just confirmation that there was an earthquake but that a tsunami was not forecast.
If I were sleeping near the ocean or at the bottom of a steep incline or something I might have appreciated the warning, even if I didn’t happen to need it in this case. However, as I am not usually in places where I’m particularly vulnerable and the loss of sleep, etc. strikes me as a more significant issue I turned off the notifications.
https://www.jma.go.jp/bosai/map.html#9/31.817/132.623/&elem=int&contents=earthquake_map