TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - The death toll from a powerful earthquake that struck Kumamoto Prefecture, southwestern Japan, has reached 30, including those suspected of being victims of the disaster, Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi said on Thursday.
As ANTARA reported, data from the Kumamoto Prefectural government put the confirmed death toll at 18, including eight at the Nippon Paper Industries Co. factory in Yatsushiro and six at the Aeon shopping center in Kashima, which was hit by an explosion after the 7.1 magnitude earthquake on Tuesday, July 28.
Included in the prefectural data were three confirmed deaths in Yatsushiro and one in the city of Kosa. One person reported missing at the paper mill, where several chimneys were badly damaged, has been found but his condition is not yet known, sources said.
Separately, the Uki City government informed Kyodo News that they were aware of two deaths in the city but had not yet reported them to the prefectural government.
The Vietnam News Agency reported that a Vietnamese trainee died after being crushed by a crane at a factory in Kosa.
Currently, the casualty figures released by the central government and the local governments in Kumamoto Prefecture differ.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Minoru Kihara, at a press conference in Tokyo, explained that the discrepancy in the data occurred because the central government relied on data from the police and fire departments, while prefectural governments calculated the figures based on reports from municipal governments.
As of Thursday morning, more than 10,000 people were sheltering in evacuation centers. About 23,000 households were without power, and about 75,000 were without water, according to the prefectural government. This has raised concerns about the well-being of residents.
JR Kyushu, the railway operator, said that bullet train services between Kumamoto Station and Kagoshima-Chuo Station on the Kyushu Shinkansen Line could not resume due to ongoing inspections of earthquake damage. The operator also cancelled the restart of the route between Chikugo-Funagoya Station in Fukuoka Prefecture and Kumamoto Station on Thursday, and cancelled all train services for the day.
The earthquake on Tuesday (28/7) was recorded at a maximum level of 7 on the Japanese earthquake intensity scale in Uki and Hikawa at 16.27 local time.
According to the Japan Meteorological Agency, people cannot stand upright or move without crawling in an earthquake of that level, and they could potentially be thrown into the air.
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