Tokyo: The death toll from Japan’s deadly earthquake reached 161 on Monday as snow complicated relief efforts with thousands of people still cut off and many others lacking power or in crowded emergency shelters.
As many as 103 people were still missing after the 7.5-magnitude quake that toppled buildings, sparked a major fire and triggered tsunami waves over a metre high in the central Ishikawa region, AFP reported. Nearly a week later, more than 2,000 people were still cut off by the damage the quake and an estimated 1,000 landslides did to roads on the worst-hit Noto Peninsula.
The region has also been blanketed in snow, with some areas receiving more than 10 centimetres overnight, making the operation harder still. A woman in her 90s survived five days under the wreckage of a collapsed house in the city of Suzu before being saved on Saturday. “Hang in there!” rescuers were heard calling to the woman, in police footage from the rainy scene published by local media.
Days of rain increased the risk of further landslides, while the fresh heavy snow could cause more buildings to collapse under its weight, the regional government warned. Around 18,000 households in the Ishikawa region remained without electricity on Monday, while more than 66,100 households were without water on Sunday.
For the 28,800 people packed into government shelters, many were also without sufficient water, electricity and heating, according to media reports. “Disaster-related deaths must be prevented at all costs. I want to improve the poor environment in shelters,” Ishikawa governor Hiroshi Hase told broadcaster NHK. “The first priority has been to rescue people under the rubble, and to reach isolated communities,” Prime Minister Fumio Kishida told NHK on Sunday.