Japanese troops hunt for survivors as quake toll hits nine

JAPAN: Troops on Sunday pulled the bodies of three people from the muddy rubble of a resort hotel in Japan, as rescue teams searched for four others believed buried there after a strong earthquake.

The discovery of the three victims — two women and one man — raised the death toll from Saturday’s quake in the north of the country to nine, with more than 220 others injured. The government deployed about 800 troops to the region to hunt for survivors after the earthquake, which measured 7.2 on the Richter scale, making it the strongest in inland Japan in eight years.

A total of 12 people remain unaccounted for, including the four at the hotel..Military helicopters roared across the rice fields and rolling hills of the region, plucking to safety more than 330 people who were cut off from the world as the tremor snapped bridges and buried roads with landslides.

Tatsuo Oikawa, 80, had an emotional reunion with his daughter who searched for him throughout the night before finding that he, like dozens of others, had stayed in a makeshift shelter out of fright.

It’s so wonderful that you survived,” said his 47-year-old daughter, Sayako, her eyes turning red with tears.

At the Komanoyu hotel, a secluded inn with natural hot springs that had survived for nearly four centuries, soldiers pulled the bodies of the three victims from a massive heap of mud, wood and shattered furniture. It’s more difficult than expected to deal with this mud,” said Masahiro Ishiba, a soldier heading a team of 300 soldiers and civilians who sawed through the debris and tried to dig a ditch to free the water. Right now we’re finding it tough to make much progress.

Japan endures about 20 percent of the world’s powerful earthquakes and has built an infrastructure intended to withstand the impact of tremors.

Kurihara, Sunday, AFP