A Pacific-wide tsunami warning was lifted Sunday after the massive earthquake in Chile sent smaller-than-expected waves to Japan, Hawaii and New Zealand.
The largest wave to hit Japan struck the northern island of Hokkaido. Some piers briefly flooded, but there were no immediate reports of damage caused by the 1.2-metre wave.
Hundreds of thousands of Japanese residents headed to higher ground from the low-lying coastal levels, but the waves that hit there -- and in the other 52 nations and territories under a tsunami warning Saturday -- were smaller than expected.
In Kesennuma in northern Japan, streets near the coast were flooded with seawater for about four hours before the water receded. There was little impact on local residents.
Saturday's early morning 8.8-magnitude earthquake in central Chile set off a Pacific-wide tsunami alert from the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center, with low-level advisories making their way as far north as Alaska and the British Columbia coast.
After the tsunami failed to cause the kind of damage that was expected, warnings were lifted Sunday.
The hours of lead time between when the earthquake hit and when experts predicted the first tsunami waves would arrive allowed officials to warn residents in advance.
Hawaiians woke to the blare of warning sirens Saturday, and many lined up for gas in preparation of what might have been. By the time the waves hit the U.S. state Saturday, 16 hours after the earthquake, they were smaller than expected and caused no apparent damage.
After the devastating tsunami hit populated areas in the Indian Ocean in December 2004, residents had little or no warning. The tsunami killed 230,000 people.
With the prediction of Saturday's tsunami, officials had the memory of the 2004 tsunami in mind, and overstated their predictions.
"We expected the waves to be bigger in Hawaii, maybe about 50 per cent bigger than they actually were," Gerard Fryer, a geophysicist for the warning centre, told The Associated Press. "We will be looking at that."
As the tsunami passed by the shores of Pacific nations with smaller waves than predicted, countries removed their local advisories.
New Zealand's Ministry of Civil Defence and Emergency Management will keep its tsunami advisory -- the lowest level of warning -- until 8 a.m. local time Monday.
Earlier Sunday, New Zealand officials reported a wave measuring about two metres on the Chatham Islands.
Several hundred residents of North Island coastal cities Gisborne and Napier were instructed to leave their homes, while residents on South Island's Banks Peninsula were told to be ready to leave at any time.
With files from The Associated Press
