Death toll hits 126 in Japan quake
Tokyo, (AFP): Rescuers and residents sifted through rubble Saturday as their focus turned to recovering bodies and cleaning up rather than finding survivors, five days after a huge earthquake struck central Japan and killed at least 126 people.
The death toll from the New Year’s Day 7.5 magnitude quake in the Ishikawa region of Japan’s main Honshu island was certain to rise, with 210 people still unaccounted for, authorities said.
The work of thousands of rescue workers has been hampered by bad weather -- with snow forecast for Sunday -- and roads torn apart by gaping cracks and blocked by an estimated 1,000 landslides.
Two elderly women were pulled from the wreckage of their homes on Thursday in the badly hit city of Wajima on the Noto peninsula, but since there has been no reason for cheer.
In Suzu, where dozens of homes lie in ruins, a dog barked while an AFP team filmed the clean-up operation on Friday, the signal of a grim discovery.
“Training for disaster rescue dogs begins with something similar to a game of hide-and-seek,” canine trainer Masayo Kikuchi told AFP.
“Finally they are trained to bark when seeing a person under the rubble.”
Houses containing any fatalities that are discovered are being marked and left alone until a coroner can come with relatives to identify the body.
Fishing boats were sunk or lifted like toys onto the shore by tsunami waves that also reportedly swept one person away.
“We sincerely pray for the repose of the souls of those who have passed away,” Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said on social media. In an emergency response meeting he told ministers “urgently and swiftly” to repair roads to help hundreds of people in cut-off areas.
Despite frosty ties with Japan, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un sent a message of “deep sympathy and condolences”, state news agency KCNA reported, echoing the United States, China and other countries.
Around 23,200 households were without electricity in Ishikawa and more than 66,400 were without running water.