7.8 Quake Strikes Japan; 13 Die, 40 Missing : Disaster: Undersea temblor 50 miles from coast is followed by several strong aftershocks. Fires and tidal waves result.

A major earthquake struck northern Japan on Monday, leveling a small hotel, setting hundreds of houses ablaze and triggering tidal waves that swept dozens of homes into the sea. At least 13 people were reported killed and about 40 were missing.

The quake, with a magnitude of 7.8, matched the strongest to hit Japan in 15 years, the Central Meteorological Agency said.

It was centered 30 miles under the Sea of Japan and about 50 miles west of Hokkaido, the nation’s third most populous island with 5.65 million people. Several strong aftershocks followed in the same area.

Police confirmed seven dead on Hokkaido, eight injured and 19 missing, basing their information on incomplete reports from villages along the coast.

Okushiri, a small island 30 miles south of the epicenter, was devastated by the quake.

Kyodo News Service said the island’s two-story wooden Yoyoso Hotel collapsed, killing at least five people and leaving about 20 missing. The public television network NHK reported that six or seven people were rescued from the burning hotel.

About 300 houses were ablaze on another part of the island of 4,600 people. A number of houses also were washed away by tidal waves, news reports said.

Television footage showed fires burning and residents gathering anxiously in small groups. Later, there were smoldering piles of ash.

Three hundred government troops joined in rescue efforts on the island, which was blacked out after the quake, NHK said.

The Hokkaido deaths, Kyodo reported, included two people who were killed in landslides, a woman who was killed by a tidal wave and a town official who died when his car overturned in an aftershock.

Police in Aomori prefecture in northern Honshu, the largest island, said a fisherman died when he fell into the sea while securing his boat.

In villages on the west coast of Hokkaido, 12 people were missing in tidal waves that swept away 30 houses, NHK said. In another town, 10 people were injured by collapsing houses, it added.

Television footage showed cracked roads and store shelves whose contents had been toppled onto the floor on Hokkaido. As dawn broke over the island today, live television reports from the port of Hakodate showed cars impaled on posts and thrown by the waves against lampposts.

The quake was not felt in Tokyo, 500 miles to the south.

On Okushiri, aftershocks were frightening already edgy residents. The meteorological agency reported aftershocks of 5.4 at 11:36 p.m. and 6.3 at 1:12 a.m. today.

NHK had warned people to evacuate northern coastal areas immediately after the quake hit at 10:17 p.m. Four hours later, it reported waves were receding.

Japan, on the Pacific “Rim of Fire,” has been rocked by about two dozen quakes of 7 or stronger in the last half-century, but none greater than 7.8 since a 7.9 temblor killed 52 people on Hokkaido on May 16, 1978.

A 7.8 quake struck Hokkaido on Jan. 18, killing one person, injuring 614 and causing widespread damage to buildings and roads. It was centered off the Pacific coast near Kushiro, some 250 miles east of Monday’s epicenter.

Perhaps the most destructive tsunami in the world was one that struck southwest Japan in 1703, killing more than 100,000 people.