At a hastily set up medical center, a 16-year-old girl who was diagnosed with a depressed skull fracture she said could not remember what happened. Power was cut in many areas, and gas leaks prompted Saibu Gas Co. to turn off supplies to some homes in the capital. Tens of thousands of households were without running water. The full extent of the damage became clear on Friday. At least 20 buildings collapsed, but many more sustained cracks or other structural damage that may render them uninhabitable. There were also seven fires. Kumamoto Castle, a designated important national treasure and arguably the prefecture’s No. 1 tourist attraction, sustained heavy damage. Part of the castle’s main wall collapsed and tiles fell from its roof. Massive stone embankments crumbled in at least six locations, and numerous cracks emerged in the walls, according to the castle’s management office. The damage in Mashiki may take a long time to repair. The roads were ripped apart, and smashed kawara tiles and shattered walls lay everywhere. Walking down the street is hazardous, given the many cracks in the asphalt and falling debris from buildings, and all the stores are shut. In the meantime, aftershocks continue to jolt the neighborhood. The epicenter was only 120 km from Kyushu Electric Power Co.’s Sendai power station in Kagoshima, Japan’s only active nuclear plant. According to the Kumamoto police, the four men and five women were killed: Toshiaki Ito, 61, Fujito Aramaki, 84, Masataka Murakami, 61, Tatsuya Sakamoto, 29, Sueko Fukumoto, 54, Yoko Miyamori, 55, Tomoko Tomita, 89, Hanae Murakami, 94 and Yumiko Matsumoto, 68. Kyushu Electric said there were no abnormalities in the plant, adding that it is looking into any possible damage. Shikoku Electric Power Co. said its idled Ikata nuclear plant in Ehime Prefecture sustained no damage. JR Kyushu suspended the Kyushu Shinkansen Line after the quake, while power on the Sanyo Shinkansen Line, which connects Honshu to Kyushu, was lost between Hakata and Kokura stations. Operations later resumed at around 9:40 p.m. The Meteorological Agency said it was the first level 7 quake since the Great East Japan Earthquake of 2011 and the first on such a scale to hit Kyushu. Remarkably, the heaviest damage was confined to Mashiki, with areas around Kumamoto experiencing strong jolts between 3 and lower 5 on the Japanese scale. Among the numerous aftershocks, however, was one with a preliminary magnitude 6.4 and an intensity of upper 6 that hit the area shortly after midnight, and was preceded by one with a magnitude of 5.7 shortly after 10 p.m.

Information from Kyodo added

 

 

Tomiko Takahashi, 94, said she was awakened by a loud noise Thursday night and found broken glass scattered around her room. The door would not open and she had to escape by squeezing through a crack in the walls, which had partially collapsed. “I can’t sleep because of fear of aftershocks. I have never experienced something so frightening,” she said. Ayumi Ishikawa, 34, said she and her family fled their home without taking many belongings. “I’m sure we have to be ready for a prolonged evacuation, but I don’t have a sense of reality about this,” Ishikawa said. The area suffered constant aftershocks all night long, and mothers hunched over their children to protect them whenever the buildings shook. A 79-year-old woman who lives alone said she fumbled about in the darkness at her home for a drug she needs for heart disease but could not find it. “I want to go home to pick it up, but I’m too afraid to go back,” she said. Injured people sought help at a hastily set up treatment center. A 16-year-old girl who was diagnosed with a depressed skull fracture she said could not remember what happened to her. In the neighboring city of Kumamoto, about 100 people gathered in a central park following the quake. Some stayed there overnight, spreading plastic sheets on the ground, locals reported. The quake severely damaged Kumamoto Castle, a designated important national treasure and arguably the prefecture’s No. 1 tourist attraction. Part of the castle’s main wall collapsed and tiles fell from its roof. Stone embankments crumbled in at least six locations and numerous cracks emerged in the walls, according to the management office.

 

Here are some questions and answers on seismic activity in Japan:

What type of earthquakes struck Kumamoto?

The 2016 Kumamoto Earthquake is actually a series of quakes that are being caused by two plates slipping against each other along an active inland fault. The events take place at a relatively shallow depth and cause the destruction of bedrock.

It is the same type as the Great Hanshin Earthquake of 1995 that hit Kobe and surrounding cities, killing over 6,000 people.

In contrast, the Great East Japan Earthquake that hit the Tohoku region in 2011, was caused by accumulated stress resulting from one tectonic plate being forced underneath another, resulting in what is called a “megathrust quake.”

What is unique about the 2016 Kumamoto Earthquake?

Whereas often a huge temblor hits first, followed by smaller aftershocks, a number of strong quakes have occurred following the first magnitude-6.5 quake on Thursday. The shaking has affected much wider areas than other quakes in the past, experts said.

The magnitude-7.3 quake that according to the Meteorological Agency was the main tremor struck the region 1½ days after the first one.

Why did we see such big quakes in relatively rapid succession?

Experts say the reason is not entirely known.

Of the 2,000 active faults around Japan, some 100 are designated by the government as key active faults. The Futagawa and Hinagu faults, along which the recent quakes occurred, are among the 100 most active and dangerous faults in the country.

The central government has conducted research on these 100 active faults over the past decade or so but was not able to predict the quakes that took place in Kumamoto, said Hiroyuki Fujiwara, a seismologist at National Research Institute for Earth Science and Disaster Prevention.

Are the focal points of quakes moving or expanding?

Fujiwara said the magnitude-7.3 quake on Saturday caught seismologists by surprise as they thought the initial quake — which turned out to be a precursor for Saturday’s — was an isolated tremor in a small section of the Futagawa fault.

Other quakes then took place further east. Some researchers say quakes may take place in succession along the lines of long faults, but no solid theory to explain such a scenario has been found, Fujiwara said.

Are these quakes precursors for others, especially along the Median Tectonic Line — the largest fault running from central Honshu to Kyushu?

Experts are not sure.

“We can explain what has happened, but it’s really hard to say what will happen,” Fujiwara said.

Takeshi Sagiya, a professor at Nagoya University’s Disaster Mitigation Research Center and an expert on crustal movement, said it is too early to worry about such a scenario.

Sagiya said he is more concerned about the southwestern side of the Hinagu fault in Kumamoto, where seismic activities appear to have been spreading in recent days.

A level-6 quake on the Japanese intensity scale of 7 may hit the fault in the near future, Sagiya said.

Is the small eruption of Mount Aso on Saturday related to the quake?

The view of volcanologists, as well as the Meteorological Agency, has been that the eruption was not triggered by the Kumamoto quakes, as its characteristics are no different from small-scale eruptions that have taken place before.

“There is probably no causal connection” between the earthquakes and the eruption, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told a news conference Saturday. “But we will keep monitoring (the volcano).”

Are the quakes in Kyushu and the magnitude-7.8 quake that hit Ecuador over the weekend — the largest since 1979 — related?

Fujiwara said they are not.

“The two locations are so far away from each other it’s impossible to suspect a link,” he said.

Are nuclear power plants in Kyushu safe?

Many citizens and anti-nuclear activists have expressed concern over the nuclear power facilities in Kyushu, in particular the two reactors running at the Sendai power plant in Kagoshima Prefecture, the only commercial nuclear plant now in operation in Japan.

The Nuclear Regulation Authority, however, has maintained that the Sendai plant does not need to be shut down because the strongest temblor registered at the plant since Thursday night was 8.6 gal (a unit used in seismology to express the acceleration of an earthquake), far lower than the safety level that would trigger an automatic reactor shutdown.

The criteria was set between 80 to 260 gal, depending on the direction of a shake and the strength of key components in the Sendai reactors.

All other reactors have been stopped in the wake of the 2011 Fukushima meltdown crisis, while power companies have applied for the NRA’s safety checks to restart many other reactors under the new safety standards drawn up after the Fukushima crisis.

At the Genkai nuclear power plant in Saga Prefecture, the strongest of the recent shakes was 20.3 gal. The reactors at the plant have long been shut down, but had they been active, they would be automatically shut down with a temblor of between 70 and 170 gal.

The Ikata nuclear power plant in Ehime Prefecture, which is also undergoing safety checks, is right by the Median Tectonic Line. The three reactors there have not shown abnormal activity since the quakes, according to Shikoku Electric Power Co. and the Ehime Prefectural Government.

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Kumamoto quake info: where to go, how to helpa>

 

Some 1,400 police officers and Self-Defense Forces personnel hunted for two people reported missing, including Hikaru Yamato, 22, a college student from Aso in the prefecture. Volunteers mucked in to help distribute food and supplies at evacuation centers in Kumamoto Prefecture and nearby. Some shoveled debris and helped to clean up homes. Some 700 people reported to authorities in the city of Kumamoto on Friday morning, the first batch of volunteers to be accepted by the city.

Around 50,000 people remain in evacuation centers across the region, unable to go home because of damage to buildings or because experts have not yet certified them safe. Some have chosen to evacuate because electric and water services are out. More than a week has passed since the initial magnitude-6.5 quake on April 14, which was followed by a magnitude-7.3 quake on Saturday. While the death toll from the quakes stands at 48, another 11 people are thought to have died from complications stemming from the stress and fatigue of living as evacuees. On Friday, the government of Kumamoto Prefecture confirmed the death in a hospital of a woman in her 70s who suffered chest pains after sheltering in a vehicle. So-called “economy class syndrome” has been suspected in several of the deaths. As of Thursday, 89,513 people from Kumamoto Prefecture and 637 from Oita Prefecture were reported to have evacuated from their homes. There were 10,271 confirmed damaged buildings. Water and gas supplies remained out in some places, although power supplies were fully restored by Wednesday. The hardest-hit Kumamoto town of Mashiki received about 200 fresh volunteers Friday morning. The town began accepting volunteers the day before, but with roughly half of its dwellings flattened or damaged, it has been limiting their work to evacuation centers amid persistent aftershocks. More than 790 seismic events ranging from minor jolts to strong earthquakes were detected in the region since the initial quake, according to the Japan Meteorological Agency. A team of researchers led by Tokyo Denki University professor Susumu Yasuda, who surveyed Kumamoto and Mashiki after the powerful quakes, said they found dozens of cases of ground liquefaction along rivers and at other locations in the area. In some cases, buildings were left askew or foundations were visible as previously solid, but water-soaked ground, flowed away during the violent shaking. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe plans to visit the quake-hit areas in Kumamoto on Saturday, Natsuo Yamaguchi, head of Komeito, told reporters after talks at the prime minister’s office.