Japan quake toll rises to 34 as evacuees battle punishing heat

Hind Al Soulia - Riyadh - KUMAMOTO —The number of people who died in Tuesday's earthquake in southwestern Japan rose to 34, authorities said on Thursday, as tens of thousands survivors were left without power in searing heat.

Rescuers are still working to find survivors after the powerful earthquake hit Kumamoto prefecture on Kyushu island, causing widespread damage to houses and power lines.

Several people died after part of a shopping center collapsed and an explosion ripped through the mall about an hour later. Emergency workers searched tirelessly for survivors at the wrecked shopping mall on Thursday.

The Kumamoto disaster management office issued the new tally for Tuesday’s quake, with seven bodies now extracted from the mass of rubble, steel and wires of the Aeon shopping mall after a suspected gas blast.

Eight people were also confirmed dead at the Nippon Paper Industries factory in Yatsushiro city, where part of a red-and-white smokestack collapsed, according to the office.

Five others were in a critical condition after the 7.1-magnitude tremor, while almost 9,500 locals were in evacuation centers in the region.

The quake caused widespread damage, flattening homes, damaging bridges, triggering fires and leaving tens of thousands of residents without power and water.

Some 13,520 households remained without electricity on Thursday.

Thousands of displaced residents are now staying in evacuation centers but the challenge is to keep them cool and hydrated as the region battles sweltering heat.

Temperatures could reach 39C in the prefecture in the coming days, according to forecasts, with officials urging survivors and rescuers to take precautions against heatstroke.

Hundreds of elderly people — Japan has the world’s second-oldest population — slumbered on thin mats on the hard lobby floor at one community center in Uki city as they sought relief from the searing sun.

On Wednesday, Japan's Defense Minister Shinjiro Koizumi announced the delivery of 300 air conditioners to Kumamoto, with 150 of the units bound for evacuation centers.

“Thank God for these shelters,” said one woman, who declined to give her name, as people slept between chairs and tables or gathered around a television.

The town of Hikawa was one of the areas worst hit, where many older structures crumpled in the quake and where residents still had no water or power on Thursday.

“The biggest problem is that there is no toilet... I had to go to a nearby school,” said Kinuko Uemura, 85, told AFP.

Soshiro Okawa, 59, was at the back of his roadside souvenir shop when the quake struck.

“It was my first time experiencing an earthquake that literally made the ground rise,” he said.

The 59-year-old heard items breaking inside his store while the ground swelled in the parking lot, shattering its asphalt surface and a series of cracks stretched into the foundation of his shop.

The Aeon shopping mall was evacuated after the earthquake but around 50 minutes later the facility was gutted by the massive blast with an unknown number of employees still inside.

Businessman Fumihiko Matsuura, 56, said he had watched the latest “Toy Story” movie at the mall only a week or so ago.

“I was here. I was just here,” he told AFP. “It’s like I narrowly escaped the danger.”

Footage from inside showed rescue workers in orange overalls and white helmets picking their way through a mass of twisted steel, dangling cables and chunks of ceiling.

A total of 25 felines from a “cat cafe” were however rescued, triggering widespread relief on social media.

TV footage showed people queueing for petrol and drinking water.

The US Geological Survey measured the quake at 6.8, lower than Japan’s reading of 7.1.

Japan is one of the world’s most seismically active countries, sitting on top of four major tectonic plates along the western edge of the Pacific “Ring of Fire.”

Kumamoto itself was hit by two devastating earthquakes in 2016, which killed 273 people and injured more than 2,800.

The archipelago, home to around 125 million people, typically experiences hundreds of jolts every year and accounts for about 18 percent of the world’s earthquakes.

The vast majority are mild, although the damage they cause varies according to their location and the depth below the Earth’s surface at which they strike.

Japan is haunted by the memory of a massive 9.0-magnitude undersea quake in 2011, which triggered a tsunami that killed or left missing around 18,500 people and wrecked the Fukushima nuclear plant.