Rescuers search for survivors after deadly quake hits Japan
At least seven people are known to have died on the island of Hokkaido.
Rescuers are searching for survivors and trying to restore power after a powerful earthquake hit the Japanese island of Hokkaido.
At least seven people are known to have died after the magnitude 6.7 earthquake struck at 3.08am.
Video cameras showed cities going dark as the quake disabled power systems, leaving nearly three million households on the island without electricity.
The island’s only nuclear power plant, which was offline, switched to a back-up generator to keep its spent fuel cool, and nuclear regulators said there was no sign of abnormal radiation.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told a news conference that seven people had been confirmed dead.
Rescuers were using shovels to sift through the tons of soil, rocks and timber in hopes of finding survivors in the town of Atsuma, where steep mountainsides collapsed, crushing homes and farm buildings.
Disaster officials in Hokkaido said about 30 people were unaccounted for.
Japan is used to dealing with disasters but the last few months have brought a string of calamities.
The quake came shortly after a typhoon that triggered heavy flooding in western Japan, leaving the main airport near Osaka and Kobe closed after a tanker rammed a bridge connecting the facility to the mainland.
The summer also brought devastating floods from torrential rains in Hiroshima and deadly hot temperatures across the country.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said that up to 25,000 troops and other personnel would be dispatched to Hokkaido to help with rescue operations.
Economy, Trade and Industry Minister Hiroshige Seko told reporters that the extensive power outage was caused by an emergency shutdown of the main thermal power plant at Tomato Atsuma that supplies half of Hokkaido’s electricity.
The hope had been to get power back up within hours and some electricity was gradually being restored. However, damage to generators at the Tomato Atsuma plant meant that the restoration of power could take more than a week, Mr Seko said.
He said utilities were starting up several other thermal and hydroelectric plants but even with those stopgap supplies thousands would still be without power for some time.
In the meantime, authorities sent power-generator vehicles to hospitals and other locations.
Reacting quickly to the disaster, troops deployed water tanker trucks in Sapporo, where residents were collecting bottles to tide them over until electricity and tap water supplies come back online. The city hall announced it had set up charging stations to help residents charge their mobile phones.
