Nearly 250,000 residents have been evacuated from their homes in the Southern island of Japan after a deadly earthquake has struck it. The search for survivors continues.
A 7.3 magnitude tremor struck Kumamoto province on the island of Kyushu, with a second one closely following within 24 hours. The first, which struck late Thursday, has claimed 9 lives. The count so far, from the 7.3 tremor is said to have injured over 1,000, leaving 32 dead, and at least 190 critical.
The wide spread damage is said to also cost the economy up to $10 billion, but the United States Geological Survey (USGS) says it is too early to be specific.
The USGS says that the shallower an earthquake the more damage it will cause. At the epicenter of Kumamoto’s Saturday quake, the depth only measured a shallow 10 kilometers below the surface.
Japan suffered a cataclysmic event in 2011, when a magnitude 9 quake triggered a tsunami that caused the nuclear meltdowns at Fukushima. Almost 20,000 people were killed in the tsunami. Currently, there are no reports of the further three nuclear plants in the area having been damaged in Saturday’s event.
Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga has said that rescue operations are underway with a further 80 people believed to be trapped under rubble, but that serious weather conditions were making rescue attempts difficult.
“The wind is expected to pick up and rain will likely get heavier,” Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said. “Rescue operations at night will be extremely difficult … It’s a race against time.”
Weather forecasts suggest a drop in temperatures to 13 degrees Celsius, heavy rains and winds.
347 aftershocks of a level 1 have been reported since the initial quake on Thursday.
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