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| Monday, 25 October 2004 |
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Japan's deadliest quakes in decade kills19, over 900 hurt TOKYO, Sunday (AFP) Japan was hit by strong aftershocks Sunday after powerful earthquakes killed at least 19 people, injured nearly 900 and for the first time ever derailed a bullet train, within days of the country's worst typhoon in a quarter century. Houses were flattened, roads were cracked wide open and streets were scattered with broken glass after a tremor measuring 6.8 on the Richter scale and more than 240 aftershocks struck Niigata prefecture, 200 kilometers (125 miles) north of Tokyo, on Saturday. Nineteen people were killed, four missing and 877 injured, said Kohei Kawasaki, a Niigata police spokesman. Public broadcaster NHK said some 1,500 people were injured. "The devastation of the quakes were beyond what we had imagined. I give my sincere sympathies," Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi told reporters Sunday. Koizumi said the government would work quickly to help victims of the quake and Typhoon Tokage, which killed at least 79 people as it ripped through Japan on Wednesday. The dead from the quake were mostly elderly and children and included a 76-year-old hospital patient whose artificial respirator was dislodged by the tremors and at least three people, including a two-month-old baby boy, who died from shock. Three children were also killed under the rubble of their house which collapsed in the town of Ojiya, the city in the seaside region that suffered much of the destruction. "The damage is getting worse, but we are not fully grasping the whole picture. We simply cannot inspect quake-hit areas because of broken roads," police spokesman Kawasaki said. Around 58,700 people were evacuated for safety around Niigata which was hit Sunday afternoon by two strong aftershocks of 4.9 and 4.6 on the Richter scale within two hours. No immediate damage was reported. The Niigata earthquakes were the deadliest to hit tremor-prone Japan since 1995 when 6,433 people were killed and 43,700 injured when the western city of Kobe was devastated by a quake measuring 7.3 on the Richter scale. The Japanese Red Cross Society distributed blankets, canned food, bread and soup and was ready with three tons of emergency kits that can provide medical supplies to 200 people in Ojiya for three days. More than 250 homes and 90 non-residential buildings were destroyed or damaged, NHK said, adding there were at least eight landslides. Saturday's quakes cut off power to as many as 284,000 households, a spokeswoman for Tohoku Electric Power Co. said, adding that 12,800 were still without electricity Sunday. The quakes also derailed a Shinkansen bullet train Saturday for the first time since Japan's high-speed rail service began 40 years ago. But no one was injured as the train, heading from Tokyo to Niigata at 120 kilometers (74 miles) per hour, was thrown off course. "Suddenly, I felt a very strong shock and realized the train was not running on railways. I thought I would die," a man who was in the train told the Mainichi Shimbun newspaper. |
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