Death toll in Japan earthquake rises to 28 as aftershock and heat complicate rescue efforts

The death toll from the powerful earthquake that hit Japan on Tuesday has risen to 30, as the search for survivors trapped in a badly damaged shopping centre, paper mill and collapsed homes across the south-west of the country continues.

The 6.8-magnitude quake, which struck Kumamoto prefecture on the island of Kyushu, injured at least 62 people, according to the prefectural government.

Almost 5,000 Self-Defence Forces (SDF) personnel deployed to the region face temperatures of up to 35C on Thursday, officials said, adding that a 5.8-magnitude aftershock overnight had further hampered the rescue efforts.

About 170 rescue workers are searching the Aeon shopping centre in the town of Kashima, which was bustling with thousands of people when the quake struck.

The company said about 3,000 customers were evacuated to a car park before a gas explosion occurred in another part of the shopping centre. Six of the 12 people pulled from the rubble have died.

Everyone caught in the explosion was a shop worker who had returned to the building after the evacuation, Aeon said. The company’s president bowed in apology at a press conference on Wednesday, saying Aeon had failed to anticipate the explosion, the cause of which was being investigated.

Japanese media footage from inside the shopping centre showed part of the ceiling had collapsed, with metal fragments and other debris scattered across the floor as helmeted, masked rescue workers searched the area.

Police and SDF personnel are continuing to search for one worker in the debris at the Nippon Paper mill in Yatsushiro, where a chimney collapsed. Ten others had become trapped, eight of whom died and two of whom were injured.

In the first reported death of a foreign national, a Vietnamese technical intern was killed after a crane fell on him at the factory where he worked, according to the Vietnamese government.

Nearly 23,000 homes are without electricity and 75,000 without running water, Kumamoto officials said. About 15,000 people have been evacuated to 400 shelters.

The defence minister said on Wednesday evening that the SDF was airlifting coolers to shelters in Kumamoto, while SDF vessels were delivering water and food.

“We’re doing everything possible to make saving lives a priority, making efforts to deliver life-saving supplies, beginning with water,” Shinjirō Koizumi said.

Aerial police footage showed several homes had been flattened, including some that had crumbled into a river.

The earthquake registered the maximum level 7 on Japan’s seven-level shindo scale. “It was the strongest quake I have ever experienced,” Kanzo Matsumoto, 73, the operator of a luxury hot spring inn in Yatsushiro, told Agence France-Presse.

The national Geospatial Information Authority said parts of the ground had shifted by 87cm during the quake.

Yatsushiro town hall sustained damage to its base-isolation system, an earthquake-resistant technology designed to protect buildings by cushioning their foundations against intense shaking. The system was rebuilt after a deadly earthquake in 2016.

Some car and semiconductor manufacturers with plants in Kyushu have halted production.

Toyota said it would pause operations at three plants while it assessed the quake’s impact on suppliers and ⁠logistics. Honda has also suspended operations at a motorcycle plant until Friday.

Taiwan’s TSMC has resumed operations at its Kumamoto facility, while Sony, Renesas Electronics and Tokyo Electron have halted production.

Kyushu is ‌an important hub for Japan’s automotive and semiconductor industries, which account for about 20% of the region’s industrial output.

Analysts said the shutdowns appeared to be driven largely by precaution than damage to production facilities.

Kumamoto was struck by two devastating earthquakes in 2016 that killed 273 people.

With Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse