Death toll from Japan’s 2 quakes rises to 41

Large aftershocks continue to plague southwest region.

TOKYO — The death toll in southern Japan reached 41 after a series of earthquakes struck Kyushu island overnight, including one more powerful than the quake that hit Kumamoto a day earlier.

A magnitude-7.3 quake occurred at a depth of 17.5 miles at 1:25 a.m. local time Saturday in Kumamoto, causing strong vibrations across the island, home to 13 million people. Almost 2,000 people were injured, according to Japanese broadcaster NHK.

The earthquake was preceded by a 6.4 magnitude quake Thursday, and it set off a series of aftershocks that were almost at the the top of Japan’s intensity scale. The shaking was most powerful close to Mt. Aso, an active volcano and popular tourist site. A small eruption was spotted thereafter the quake, NHK reported.

Among the displaced were the Tanaka family of the town of Ozu, who were planning to spend the night in their cars at a a public park Saturday along with others concerned that their homes could collapse if yet another quake should strike.

“I don’t think we can go back there. Our life is in limbo,” said 62-year-old Yoshiaki Tanaka, waiting with his wife and 85-year-old mother as other evacuees served rice balls for dinner.

Army troops and other rescuers , rushed Saturday to try to reach scores of trapped residents in hard-hit communities near Kumamoto, a city of 740,000.

Heavy rain started falling Saturday night, threatening to complicate the relief operation and set off more mudslides.

“Daytime today is the big test” for rescue efforts, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said early Saturday. Landslides had already cut off roads and destroyed bridges, slowing down rescuers.

Nearly 200,000 homes were without electricity, Japanese media reported, and an estimated 400,000 households were without running water.

Kumamoto prefectural official Riho Tajima said that more than 200 houses and other buildings had been destroyed or damaged, and that 91,000 people had evacuated from their homes.

Hundreds of people lined up for rations at distribution points before nightfall, bracing for the rain and strong winds that were expected. Local stores quickly ran out of stock and shut their doors, and people said they were worried about running out of food.

Police in Kumamoto prefecture said that at least 32 people had died in Saturday morning’s earthquake. Nine were killed in Thursday night’s quake.

More than half the deaths were in Mashiki, a town on the eastern border of Kumamoto city that was hit hardest by the first quake.

Japan’s Kyodo news agency reported that four people were missing in Minamiaso, a more rural area farther east of Kumamoto where landslides were triggered by the second quake.

One landslide tore open a mountainside in Minamiaso, sending debries cascading from the top to a highway below. Another gnawed at a highway above a smashed house that had fallen down a ravine. In another part of the village, houses were hanging precariously at the edge of a huge that had opened in the earth.

Yoshihide Suga, the Japanese government’s top spokesman, said the number of troops in the area was being raised to 20,000, while additional police and firefighters were also on the way.

In Mashiki, where people were trapped beneath the rubble for hours, an unconscious 93-year-old woman, Yumiko Yamauchi, was dragged out from the debris of her home Saturday and taken by ambulance to a hospital. Her sonin-law Tatsuhiko Sakata said she had refused to move to shelter with him after the first quake Thursday.

“When I came to see her last night, I was asking her: ‘Mother? I’m here! Do you remember me? Do you remember my face?’ She replied with a huge smile filled with joy. A kind of smile that I would never forget. And that was the last I saw of her,” Sakata said.

Japanese TV showed a collapsed student dormitory at Aso city’s Tokai University that was originally two floors, but now looked like a single-story building. A witness said he heard a cry for help from the rubble. Two students were reported to have died there.

The area has been rocked by aftershocks. The Japan Meteorological Agency said the magnitude-7.3 quake early Saturday may have been the main one, with the one Thursday night a foreshock.

Tanaka, the man spending the night in his car with others in Ozu, had spent Friday starting to clean up the mess from the first earthquake, hoping the aftershocks would gradually subside.

“Then came the big one, which was so powerful I couldn’t even stand on my feet. It was horrifying,” he said.

David Rothery, professor of planetary geosciences at The Open University in Britain, said Saturday’s quake was 30 times more powerful than the one Thursday.

“It is unusual but not unprecedented for a larger and more damaging earthquake to follow what was taken to be the main event,” he said.

KYODO NEWS Heavy machinery works recovery efforts of Oita Expressway, which was damaged by a landslide following an earthquake in Yufu, Oita prefecture, on Saturday. Strong quakes have trapped many beneath flattened homes.