The victims of the earthquake in Japan amount to 94 dead and 240 missing

Japan has redoubled efforts this Friday to find the 240 people who remain missing since New Year's Day, when a 7.6 magnitude earthquake shook the center of the country. The Japanese Prime Minister, Fumio Kishida, asked in a press conference held on Thursday that every effort be made to save the greatest number of lives, “even beyond 72 hours after the catastrophe”, after which the rate Survival rate drops sharply, according to emergency personnel. That decisive margin ended on Thursday afternoon (early morning in mainland Spain). The number of fatalities now amounts to 94, according to the latest count published by the Kyodo news agency, this Friday at noon.

A total of 4,600 troops from the Japanese Self-Defense Forces have joined the search operations on the Noto peninsula (Ishikawa prefecture), which have been hampered by enormous damage to roads and infrastructure, landslides, rain and temperatures below zero. With them, the total number of rescuers rises to 7,000. Authorities have reported that 156 people have been rescued, including an elderly octogenarian who spent three days under the rubble. There are more than 40 notifications of victims who are still trapped under collapsed buildings, as reported this Friday morning by the Kyodo agency. The same media reports that 240 people remain missing.

The central government plans to allocate 4 billion yen (24.6 million euros) from reserve funds to step up its response, although that figure could increase: the full extent of the damage is still unclear because some transportation routes Access is blocked and communications remain interrupted.

Roads in very bad condition

Doctor Shunsaku Kohriki, who has worked in other emergency situations, told Reuters: “Compared to other disasters, the access roads to Wajima are in very bad condition and I think it takes longer than usual for assistance to arrive. (…) Realistically, the evacuees will have to live in very harsh conditions for a while,” he asserted. Some 33,000 Ishikawa residents evacuated on January 1 are still distributed among 370 shelters, where food and water are becoming scarce, as acknowledged by the mayor of Wajima, Shingeru Sakaguchi, quoted by local media.

Three days after the earthquake, 30 municipalities remained inaccessible and some 780 residents remained completely isolated, according to Ishikawa prefectural authorities on Thursday afternoon. Material aid has arrived in dribs and drabs, local media warn. An estimated 30,000 homes in the region have no electricity and 80,000 lack running water, while at least 200 buildings have collapsed or been damaged. The Government has promised to provide supply proactively, rather than waiting for official requests from councils.

The epicenter of the earthquake was located about 30 kilometers east and northeast of the municipality of Wajima, on the Noto peninsula. Monday's tremor, of magnitude 7.6, registered level 7 on the Japanese seismic intensity scale, the highest in this gradation. Ishikawa, Niigata, Toyama and Yamagata prefectures issued evacuation orders affecting more than 50,000 residents.

The strong shaking also forced the authorities to activate a “major tsunami alert” along the western coast of the Japanese archipelago, from Hokkaido (north) to Nagasaki prefecture (south). It was the first time it had happened since the 2011 disaster caused by the Fukushima nuclear accident. After a few hours, the alarm was lowered to a “tsunami alert” and, on the following day, it was completely eliminated. In the port of Wajima, the tsunami caused waves one meter high, although they were initially expected to reach five meters.

The northern part of the Noto Peninsula, the area most affected after the January 1 earthquake, has been experiencing notable seismic movements since December 2020. As of last month, 506 shocks with a seismic intensity of at least 1 had been reported, the smallest tremor that humans can perceive. Experts cited by Japanese media believe that one of the causes is that water and steam at high pressure are rising from the depths of the subsoil, which already triggered a magnitude 6.5 earthquake in May of last year, in which one person died. , 49 were injured and 200 houses collapsed.

Takuya Nishimura, professor of geodesy at the Disaster Prevention Research Institute of Kyoto University, told the newspaper Asahi Shimbun.“Although the mechanism of the earthquake is similar to that of previous earthquakes on the Noto peninsula, I never thought that one of such a large magnitude would occur there. “It is close to the strongest that has ever occurred on the coast of the Sea of ​​Japan.”

In 1983, a tsunami generated by a magnitude 7.8 earthquake in the central coastal areas of the Sea of ​​Japan killed 104 people. A decade later, the toll of a 7.7 magnitude earthquake off southwest Hokkaido and a subsequent tsunami was 230 victims. Since the last quake approached those magnitudes, Nishimura considers the possibility that a fault may have moved outside the main zone of the seismic swarm.

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