An earthquake that struck the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido has led to at least 44 deaths and power shortages across the island. Hokkaido Electric Power Co’s 1,650 MW Tomato-Atsuma coal-fired plant, which supplies almost half of the island’s electricity, suffered a fire in the turbine of its fourth unit and boiler damage to its first and second units, which required a week to repair. The company’s smaller coal-fired Sunagawa (250 MW) and Naie (350 MW) plants were also put out of operation for a short period, as were its oil-fired Date (700 MW) and Shiriuchi (700 MW) plants, as well as 300 MW worth of hydropower generation capacity. For a period, power was lost across the entire island, the first time since 1951, but Hokkaido Electric Power can be proud that it restored 3.95 GW of power generation in around a week following the 6.6 magnitude quake.