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Another Jolt For Japan After Earthquake
With nine people dead, over a thousand others injured, hundreds
of collapsed buildings and damaged roads and train tracks, Japan got
a new jolt from Monday's quake as officials who first said a nuclear
power plant had no radioactive leak admitted 12 hours later that it
did.
With highways ripped up and bridges destroyed, officials are
struggling to get emergency supplies to the region, where nearly
13,000 people have crowded into evacuation centers amid worries of
mudslides and more aftershocks.
Some 53,000 homes in the quake zone are without water, 35,000 are
without gas as of early Tuesday, and over 25,000 households are
without power.
Further complicating the cleanup during what is Japan's rainy
season, forecasters are predicting heavy rain, flooding and
lightning in the area.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuhisa Shiozaki said Tuesday that
officials are still assessing the damage. "The most important thing
is to take necessary measures quickly and respond to the needs of
the victims," he said.
Many of the injured suffered broken bones, cuts and bruises. "I got
so dizzy that I could barely stand up," said Kazuaki Kitagami, a
worker at a 7-Eleven convenience store in Kashiwazaki, the
hardest-hit city. "The jolt came violently from just below the
ground."
The Japanese Meteorological Agency put the magnitude at 6.8, while
the U.S. Geological Survey said it was 6.6.
In Kashiwazaki, the quake reduced older buildings to piles of
lumber. On Tuesday morning, officials said a total of 342 houses had
been destroyed and another 469 were damaged.
"The damage is more than we had imagined," said Kashiwazaki Mayor
Hiroshi Aida. "We want to recover water first as soon as possible so
more people can return home."
Nine people in their 70s and 80s - six women and three men - died,
most of them crushed by collapsing buildings, the Kyodo news agency
said early Tuesday. One person was still missing, officials said.
The area was plagued by aftershocks, but there were no immediate
reports of additional damage or casualties. Near midnight, Japan'sMeteorological Agency said a 6.6-magnitude quake hit off the west
coast, shaking wide areas of Japan, but it was unrelated to the
Niigata quake to the north and there were no immediate reports of
damage.
The quake, centered off the coast of Niigata in northwest Japan but
felt as far as 160 miles away in Tokyo, triggered a fire in an
electrical transformer and caused a leak of radioactive water at the
Kashiwazaki Kariwa nuclear power plant, a sprawling complex that is
the world's largest in terms of electricity output.The quake hit just after 10 in the morning on Monday but it wasn't
until Monday night that officials, who had said there was no
radioactive leak, admitted that there had been one but insisted
there is no danger from the leak.
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