Japan rescuers rushed on Wednesday to save people trapped in collapsed buildings after a powerful 6.8-magnitude earthquake struck the southwestern prefecture of Kumamoto on Tuesday afternoon, killing at least 13 people.
As more than 60 aftershocks continued to jolt Kyushu, Japan’s southernmost main island, reports began to emerge of dozens of people trapped inside partially collapsed structures. Those included a shopping mall in the town of Kashima in south central Kumamoto.
Fire response teams and the police joined 3,600 military personnel in the rescue efforts. As of Wednesday morning, eight people had been pulled from the heavily damaged mall. Of that group, two women in their 20s were confirmed dead, one person was in cardiac arrest and five others sustained non-life-threatening injuries, according to Kumamoto officials.
“Arduous rescue operations are still underway,” Governor Takashi Kimura of Kumamoto said at a meeting about the disaster, held just after midnight on Wednesday. “As the situation remains unpredictable, we intend to take all possible measures right now.”
The deaths of the two women at the mall brought the total number of quake-related fatalities to 13, Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi told reporters on Wednesday morning.
In brief remarks, Ms. Takaichi offered condolences to bereaved families and said she was grateful to rescue teams that had been “working tirelessly through the night.”
“There are still people waiting for help, and we are in a race against time,” she said. “We will mobilize all available resources to rescue as many people as possible.”
The quake’s death toll was expected to rise. As of Wednesday morning, five people were in a state of cardiopulmonary arrest, and the whereabouts of at least seven other people remained unknown, according to officials from the local disaster countermeasure department. Cardiopulmonary arrest is a term often used in Japan before a death can be confirmed by a coroner.
Four hospitals in the area were treating around 250 people for quake-related injuries, according to the public broadcaster NHK.
In addition to mobilizing rescue operations, local officials in Kumamoto were assessing widespread damage to buildings, expressways, bridges and historic sites across the prefecture.
After the quake on Tuesday, fires erupted in Kumamoto City, the regional capital, which has a population of more than 700,000. At Kumamoto Castle, a centuries-old landmark in the center of the city, a stone wall partially collapsed.
At the partially collapsed mall, about 200 people were evacuated immediately after the initial earthquake on Tuesday, according to the prefectural police headquarters. Shortly after, an explosion rocked the structure, with video footage showing smoke and debris spewing into surrounding areas.
Four of 11 people trapped in a paper plant were rescued. Intense shaking from the quake had caused the facility’s chimney to collapse, local disaster-countermeasure officials said Wednesday morning. Two of those rescued were found in a state of cardiopulmonary arrest.
Power outages affected more than 35,000 households on Wednesday morning, according to Kyushu Electric Power. About 84,000 households in five prefectures had no water supply, according to Japan’s land and infrastructure ministry.
Kumamoto Airport said it would resume normal operations on Wednesday, while many trains in the area, including bullet trains, suspended services across Kyushu. Parts of the island’s main expressway remained closed.
The disaster comes a decade after a series of earthquakes in the prefecture killed more than 270 people and injured thousands of others.
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