Japan earthquake: Death toll rises to 55 as rescuers search rubble

Rescue workers were searching on Tuesday for survivors under the rubble from Japan’s New Year’s Day earthquake, which has left at least 48 people dead and dozens injured.

Prime minister Fumio Kishida has sent the country’s Self-Defence Forces (SDF) to Ishikawa Prefecture on the Japan Sea coast, but said access was being hindered by buckled roads.

“People trapped in buildings should be rescued as soon as possible before the buildings collapse. I’ve ordered SDF officials to do everything they can to get to the disaster-hit areas,” he said.

Water and power remain cut off in many areas, and thousands of people were still sheltering on Tuesday in school gymnasiums, community centres and other evacuation facilities.

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Authorities have confirmed 55 deaths from the quake, including a young boy and an elderly man who was pulled from the rubble of his house. The death toll was expected to climb.

Many of the dead were crushed in older homes, which were built before modern earthquake regulations came into force.

Japan’s Meteorological Agency says the magnitude-7.6 quake, which measured a maximum 7 on Japan’s own seismic scale, was the strongest in the region since records began in 1885. The force of the quake shifted the ground 1.3 metres to the west.

The quake’s epicentre was off the tip of Noto, a peninsula that juts out from Ishikawa Prefecture about 100km into the Japan Sea. The agency says the area has been hit by over 100 earthquakes since Monday and that further strong aftershocks are certain.

“It was the worst shaking I’ve ever experienced,” said Ryohei Shokawa who lives in the small town of Terai, Ishikawa Prefecture. Like many in the area, he fled his home on New Year’s Day. “A lot of people are older and living alone around here. They need help.”

About 97,000 people along the Japan Sea coast were told to evacuate after the government predicted a tsunami of up to five metres. The warnings were later downgraded and had been lifted by Tuesday morning. A tsunami wave of 1.2m was recorded in Wajima, a port city of about 20,000 people.

Wajima was among the worst-hit areas from the quake, which toppled a seven-storey building and started fires that consumed over 100 buildings around the city’s centre, according to public service broadcaster NHK. Quakes often start fires by knocking over cookers or stove heaters. The fires spread quickly in older districts with wooden houses.

The area rattled on Monday is home to Japan’s most dense concentration of nuclear power plants, including Kashiwazaki-Kariwa, the world’s largest commercial nuclear facility.

The Nuclear Regulation Authority said the quake had produced no irregularities at the plants: two nuclear reactors in Shika, closest to the epicentre, had been halted for regular inspections.

Japan is part of the “Ring of Fire”, an area around the Pacific Ocean that accounts for most of the planet’s earthquakes. About 20 per cent of world’s strongest quakes, with a magnitude of 6 or greater, occur in the country.

Japanese scientists have spent decades and billions of yen trying to forecast when and where quakes and tsunami will hit, but the most important defence against fatalities is the country’s strict building codes.

All buildings built after 1981 must be able to withstand collapse in an earthquake with an impact on a seismic scale of upper 6 or higher. These regulations have been strengthened repeatedly after the worst disasters and have sharply cut the rate of collapsed houses, and post-quake urban fires. But about a fifth of buildings across Japan predate 1981 and are still vulnerable.