2024-01-05 11:03:35
Authorities in the Japanese prefecture of Ishikawa, the hardest hit by the 7.6 earthquake on the Richter scale that occurred on Monday (1st), this Friday (5) raised the number of deaths to 94 and the number of missing people to 242, with little hope of finding more survivors.
The cities with the highest number of missing people are two of those hardest hit by the earthquake, Wajima and Suzu, where many houses collapsed, and rescue efforts continue despite the 72-hour limit after which it is very difficult to find survivors.
The Japanese Coast Guard has also been searching since yesterday, with the help of a plane and a boat, for people who may have been swept away by the tsunami — sea level rises of up to 1.2 m were recorded — triggered by the earthquake that hit the central region from Japan at the beginning of the week.
Experts also warned of aftershocks throughout this week and next, which could be of great intensity, as well as the rains that are affecting the area, which could cause landslides and also hamper rescue efforts.
In Wajima, at least 55 people died, while 23 died in Suzu and municipalities such as Hakui, Noto and Anamizu total more than 12.
The good news of the day was the rescue alive of an octogenarian woman in Suzu, who was found under the rubble of her house by a rescue dog from the Osaka fire brigade (western Japan).
The National Police Agency (NPA) has already deployed 1,100 members to the region, while the number of Self-Defense Forces (Army) members has doubled to almost 5,000.
To date, more than 30,000 people remain homeless in 370 different shelters in Ishikawa, where around 160 people are still isolated due to damaged roads.
Around 27,000 homes in the region are still without electricity and 68,000 are without water.
The earthquake, which struck the Noto peninsula — an area known to have active faults — on Monday, had its epicenter 30 km northeast of Wajima and reached level 7 on Japan’s closed scale of 7, which focuses on power destructive of the tremor.
This earthquake is already seen as the most devastating in Japan since 2011, a 9.0 magnitude tremor that caused a tsunami that left more than 20,000 dead and triggered the Fukushima nuclear disaster, the worst since Chernobyl (Ukraine) in 1986.
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