62 people have died in a series of powerful earthquakes in western Japan.
On Wednesday, rescuers were trying to rescue those trapped under the rubble of buildings. Final figures of the injured and dead are being updated. The first 72 hours are considered crucial to saving lives after natural disasters.
Two days after a magnitude 7.6 earthquake struck the region, aftershocks continue to shake Ishikawa Prefecture and surrounding areas. Water, electricity and mobile phone services are still down in some areas affected by the quake.
Ishikawa prefectural authorities said 29 people were killed in the city of Wajima and 22 in Suzu. Dozens of people were seriously injured, including in neighbouring prefectures.
Thanks to prompt warnings to the public via radio and telephone, and a quick response from the public and officials, some damage was limited.
Toshitaka Katada, a professor at the University of Tokyo who specialises in natural disasters, said people were prepared because the area had already experienced earthquakes in recent years. They had evacuation plans and emergency supplies. He told The Associated Press:
“There are probably no people on Earth who are as disaster-ready as the Japanese.”
Japanese media show footage of widespread destruction in the worst-hit areas: landslides have covered roads, boats have been washed ashore and a fire has reduced an entire neighbourhood of Wajima city to ash.
The Japanese military sent 1,000 soldiers to the disaster zones to take part in rescue efforts. It was unknown how many more victims might be under the rubble.
Nuclear regulators said several nuclear plants in the region were operating normally. A strong earthquake and tsunami in 2011 caused three reactors to melt down and released large amounts of radiation at a nuclear plant in northeastern Japan.
On Monday, the Japan Meteorological Agency issued a major tsunami warning for Ishikawa and lower-level tsunami warnings or advisories for the rest of the west coast of Japan’s main island of Honshu as well as the northern island of Hokkaido.
More than 31,800 people were in shelters, the government said. Japanese media reports said tens of thousands of homes had been destroyed.
Japan experiences hundreds of earthquakes every year and the vast majority cause no damage. The number of earthquakes in the Noto peninsula region has been steadily increasing since 2018, a Japanese government report said last year.
The country is haunted by a massive 9.0-magnitude undersea quake off northeastern Japan in 2011, which triggered a tsunami that left about 18,500 people dead or missing. It also swamped the Fukushima atomic plant, causing one of the world’s worst nuclear disasters.
Japan is often hit by earthquakes because of its geographical location along the Ring of Fire, an arc of volcanoes and fault lines in the Pacific Ocean basin.
