Strongest aftershock since Japan tsunami kills 2

The 7.1-magnitude tremor late Thursday was the strongest since northeastern Japan's jumbo 9.0-magnitude quake March 11. The latest shattered windows, kicked items from shelves and collapsed some roofs that weren't already demolished, but generated no tsunami and largely spared the region's nuclear plants. Some slightly radioactive water spilled at one plant, but the tsunami-crippled Fukushima Dai-ichi complex reported no new problems.

Matsuko Ito, who has been living in a shelter in the small northeastern city of Natori since the tsunami, said there's no getting used to the terror of being awoken by shaking. She said she started screaming when the quake struck around 11:30 p.m.

"It's enough," the 64-year-old while smoking a cigarette outside. "Something has changed. The world feels strange now. Even the way the clouds move isn't right."

Many people have lived without water and electricity for nearly a month, and the latest tremor sunk more homes into blackness: About 2.6 million households -- about 40 percent of those supplied in the area -- were dark Friday, said Souta Nozu, a spokesman for Tohoku Electric Power Co., which serves northern Japan.

Six conventional plants in the area were knocked out, though three have since come back online and the others should be up again within hours, Nozu said. But with power lines throughout the area damaged, it was not clear whether normal operations would be restored, he said.

Several nuclear power plants briefly switched to diesel generators but were reconnected to the grid by Friday afternoon. One plant north of Sendai -- which has been closed since the tsunami -- briefly lost the ability to cool its spent fuel pools, but quickly got it back.

At a plant in Onagawa, some radioactive water splashed out of the pools but did not leave a containment building, Tohoku Electric said. Such splash-out is "not unusual, although it is preferable that it doesn't happen," according to Japanese nuclear safety agency official Tomoho Yamada.

"Closer inspection could find more problems," said agency spokesman Hidehiko Nishiyama, but no radiation was released into the environment at Onagawa.

The plant began leaking oil into the ocean in the first earthquake, and the flow escaped a containment boom in Thursday's tremor, according to coast guard spokesman Hideaki Takase. By Friday, the leak had been contained again, he said.

Thursday's quake initiated a tsunami warning of its own, but it was later canceled. Two people were killed, national fire and disaster agency spokesman Junichi Sawada reported Friday. A 79-year-old man died of shock and a woman in her 60s was killed when power was cut to her oxygen tank. More than 130 people were injured, according to the national police agency.

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