A major earthquake hit Japan’s southern Kyushu island on Tuesday, knocking out power to thousands of homes, rupturing roads and leaving some trapped and others presumed dead inside a partially collapsed shopping mall.
Speaking to reporters at her office in Tokyo, Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi said the full extent of casualties and damage from the quake was still being assessed.
“We have already been informed that people have been injured. Power outages and fires have occurred in some areas, and there has also been damage to roads and bridges and the collapse of buildings,” Takaichi said.
“I ask everyone to take action to protect themselves, including evacuating to a safe location.”
Takaichi also said her government has set up a task force to deal with the emergency, and that 3,600 soldiers would be deployed to help with the disaster recovery as aftershocks continued to rumble.
The quake struck around 4:27 p.m. local time with a preliminary magnitude of 7.1. Its epicentre was about 20 kilometres south of Kumamoto, central Kyushu’s largest city with a population of around 700,000.
Around 20 to 30 workers at the prefecture’s largest shopping mall were unaccounted for after it was rocked by an explosion in the aftermath of the quake, public broadcaster NHK said.
Local news outlets quoted police saying several had died or were presumed dead in the incident, although Reuters could not immediately confirm the reports.
One side of the mall, which houses around 200 stores, was torn away, exposing steel beams and strewing debris across a vast parking lot, footage showed. Several ambulances and fire engines were parked outside, as rescue teams searched for survivors.
A spokesperson for mall operator Aeon said customers and employees were evacuated from the area right after the initial quake and that the exact cause of the ensuing blast was unclear. Authorities are investigating a possible gas explosion, broadcaster NTV reported.
The mall was also badly damaged during an April 2016 earthquake and held a 10th anniversary event recently to commemorate its recovery, as a redevelopment and expansion was said to have included seismically reinforced ceilings and overall improvements to safety and resilience.
Kazuya Tsurunaga told broadcaster TBS he heard the explosion while cleaning up broken dishes inside a pub about 300 metres from the mall.
“It was a huge impact,” he said. “A large cloud of smoke billowed up, and because the wind happened to be blowing and the wind direction was towards the shop, the area around us was in a state like volcanic ash was falling.”
Several other buildings were also on fire or partially collapsed, according to footage from NHK, while large cracks appeared on major roads, including an elevated highway.
Evacuation centres
The Japanese government issued emergency earthquake warnings for Kumamoto, Nagasaki, Kagoshima, Fukuoka, Saga, Oita, and Miyazaki prefectures, all on Japan’s southern Kyushu island. A tsunami warning for a wave measuring one metre was issued after the earthquake, the Japan Meteorological Agency said. The advisories were lifted within two hours.
Around 300,000 people have been instructed to go to evacuation centres, Japan’s Fire and Disaster Management Agency said.
Kyushu Electric Power said about 40,000 homes had lost power as a result of the quake, while railway company JR Kyushu said that it had suspended services, including its high-speed bullet trains. Kumamoto airport also shut its runway, as airlines diverted and cancelled flights.
Telecoms operators KDDI and Docomo said there was disruption to its mobile phone services due to power shortages and transmission-line failures.
There were no irregularities reported at the nuclear power stations in the area, Japan’s nuclear regulation authority said.
TSMC, the world’s largest contract chipmaker, evacuated workers from its plant in the area as a precaution, a spokesperson for the firm said.
Sony and Fujifilm also evacuated staff from their plants in the area, Nikkei newspaper reported. A Sony spokesperson earlier said it was checking the situation.
Japan is one of the world’s most earthquake-prone countries, with a tremor occurring at least every five minutes. Located along the “Ring of Fire” of volcanoes and oceanic trenches partly encircling the Pacific Basin, Japan accounts for about 20 per cent of the world’s earthquakes of magnitude 6.0 or more.
Kumamoto was hit with a deadly quake in 2016 that left more than 50 people dead, 1,800 injured and tens of thousands of homes damaged or destroyed.