Jakarta – A powerful earthquake just hit Japan last Monday. According to the US Geological Survey, as quoted by Reuters, Tuesday (2/1/2024), the earthquake was the strongest in this region in more than the last four decades.
Houses were destroyed, fires broke out and military personnel were deployed to help with rescue operations, government spokesman Yoshimasa Hayashi told reporters.
An elderly man was pronounced dead after a building collapsed in Shika Town in Ishikawa, NTV television reported citing local police reports.
Thousands of residents were even afraid to return to their homes because the devastating earthquake that occurred still left several aftershocks that were prone to triggering building collapses.
A photo reported by Reuters shows how residents chose to stay to spend the night in an elementary school building that was transformed into an evacuation camp after the earthquake hit the Kanazawa region, Japan.
A snowboarder on holiday in Japan’s Hakuba Alps said his entire hotel room shook. Baldwin Chia told Reuters how he was very worried about avalanches but had not received any reports of them.
He said that earthquakes are often heard in Japan. “But you don’t expect to actually experience it.”
Andy Clark, a British resident in Japan, described to the BBC what had been a terrifying afternoon and evening while he was in the earthquake-affected coastal town of Toyama when the quake struck.
“I started holding the wall to keep it upright,” he said before heading to the school roof to save himself.
After the devastating earthquake he experienced, Clark admitted that he was so worried about the potential for aftershocks and tsunamis that might occur that he had difficulty sleeping.
Jeffrey Hall, a lecturer at Kanda University, said he felt the shaking for about two minutes even though he was in Yokohama, opposite Japan’s main island.
“The earthquake was very, very serious,” he told the BBC.
(dna/dna)
2024-01-02 00:22:43
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