The death toll in Japan reached 100 on Saturday after rescue workers fought aftershocks to carefully pull people following a major 7.6 magnitude earthquake in the western part of the country. Earlier in the day, 98 casualties were reported but two more deaths from Anamizu took the toll to 100, as per an Associated Press report.
Meanwhile officials in Ishikawa prefecture, the hardest-hit region, held their daily meetings to discuss strategy and damages.
Some survivors who had clung to life were pulled out from collapsed homes, stated the report, adding that a man was rescued 72 hours after a series of powerful quakes started rattling Japan’s western coast on the New Year’s day.
As of Saturday, the number of missing person came down to 211 after it had shot up.
On Wednesday, an elderly man was found alive in a collapsed home in Suzu, one of the hardest-hit cities on Ishikawa Prefecture. Firefighters got him out on a stretcher, praising him for holding on for so long as his daughter called out “dad, dad.”
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The earthquake caused to shift the sandy coastline in western Japan by upto 250 metres seaward in some areas, according to the Earthquake Researh Institute at the University of Tokyo.
A large fire in the town of Wajima, tsunamis, and landslides were caused in the region due to the quake. As some routes were cut off by the destruction, worries grew for the communities in which water, food, blankets, and medicines had yet to arrive.
An aid of $100,000 was announced by the United States on Friday which included blankets, water and medical supplies, and promised more help would come.
Thousands of Japanese troops have joined the effort to reach the hardest-hit spots on the Noto Peninsula, the epicentre of the earthquake, connected by a narrow land strip to the rest of the main island of Honshu.