TOKYO: A day after a powerful earthquake that rocked the country and left at least one person dead, aftershocks shook Japan as authorities assessed the damage wreaked by the jolt that destroyed several homes and buildings.
According to the Japan Meteorological Agency, the Friday mid-afternoon earthquake with a magnitude of 6.5 struck the central Ishikawa region at a depth of 12 kilometres.
The agency reported that there had been more than 50 aftershocks, some of them powerful, by Saturday morning and warned that the region would see landslides due to heavy rain.
The disaster management organisation in Japan reported on Saturday that at least 29 people had been hurt. The hardest-hit city in the country is Suzu in Ishikawa Prefecture. “Our staff are out assessing damage from the quake,” an official there told AFP.
According to him, 50 people were taken to the evacuation shelters established at schools and the city hall, while two trapped inside destroyed structures were rescued. A grocery store was seen on television footage littered with broken wine bottles and other items falling off the shelves. After their wooden homes were partially demolished, some occupants were spotted cleaning up debris in the rain. One guy told public broadcaster NHK, “I asked a carpenter for a temporary fix of the house, which is now covered with a blue tarp to protect it from rainwater.”
More than thirty families in Suzu had water shortages, according to officials who added that temporary public supplies had been made available after some of the area’s running water turned brown. The earthquake was recorded as an upper six on the Japanese Shindo seismic scale, reaching a maximum of seven.
Japan, located on the “Ring of Fire” in the Pacific, a region of extremely active seismic activity extending through Southeast Asia and the Pacific Ocean, experiences earthquakes frequently.
After returning from his tour to Singapore and four African nations, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida expressed his condolence to the person who lost his life and sympathies to Aftees on Friday.
He told the media, “The government will continue to act quickly in taking measures and will closely communicate with officials on the ground.”
