Overview
- Hachinohe issued an evacuation order covering 48 households near the NTT Aomori Hachinohe building early on December 11.
- The regional MLIT office closed about 1 kilometer of National Route 45 and nearby streets with no timeline for reopening.
- A drone survey by NTT East found one of four support columns fractured roughly 50 meters above ground and multiple bolts detached, and the full extent of damage is still being evaluated.
- NTT East reports the mobile antennas on the structure remain in service with no communications outages.
- The tower, about 70 meters tall and built in 1970 on a roughly 30-meter building, passed a routine inspection in September; NTT East is conducting detailed surveys and has not set a repair schedule.