A scare, then relief after powerful Japan quake and tsunami

Coastal residents returned home from higher ground, and fishing boats to port, after tsunami warnings were lifted along Japan's Pacific coast.

At least 14 people were reported injured, three with broken bones, and Japanese TV showed items scattered on the floor in a store and books fallen from shelves in a library.

Katushiro Abe, a 47-year-old tourism official in Ishinomaki, a city hit hard by the 2011 tsunami, was on the early shift and already in the office, but his wife and teenage daughter fled their home.

The Japan Meteorological Agency described it as an aftershock of the 2011 quake, which triggered a tsunami that killed about 18,000 people and wiped out entire neighborhoods.

The plant is being decommissioned after the 2011 tsunami sent three of its reactors into meltdown, but the site remains at risk as the utility figures out how to remove still-radioactive fuel rods and debris and what to do with the melted reactor cores.

At the nearby Fukushima Dai-ni plant, TEPCO said a pump that supplies cooling water to a spent fuel pool stopped working, but a backup pump was employed after about 90 minutes, and the temperature rose less than one degree.