The death toll in a powerful earthquake that rocked Japan’s Osaka on Monday has risen to five, with some 370 injured, officials said yesterday, urging vigilance against landslides ahead of heavy rains. The fifth fatality was a 66-year-old man who was found dead yesterday under a number of books and CDs in his home, a local government spokeswoman said.
The other casualties were a nine-year-old girl who was killed when a wall collapsed at her school following the 5.3-magnitude quake, along with two men and a woman, all in their 80s, who were trapped under a wall or furniture.
“The government will keep up efforts to rescue people,” top government spokesman Yoshihide Suga told reporters, though he added that there were no reports of missing people.
And he said officials would do “everything we can” to quickly restore gas and running water to homes cut off after the quake. Japan’s meteorological agency meanwhile warned that heavy rains expected in Osaka on Tuesday and Wednesday could cause landslides in the region, with the quake potentially having loosened earth. Suga also called for residents to be on alert, saying “landslide disasters are possible in the region that experienced strong tremors, even if rains are light.”
The weather agency said the region could see 50mm of rain by today morning and up to 100mm in the 24 hours after that to tomorrow morning.
“Normally we don’t issue warnings with this level of rains, but after the quake it could cause landslides, floods and swelling river streams,” official Masakatsu Oya told AFP.
Authorities have also warned of the possibility of strong aftershocks in the coming week and especially in the next two to three days.
A 4.0-magnitude aftershock hit the region early Tuesday, the meteorological agency said. Electricity outages caused by the quake have been resolved, but restoring gas and water will take longer, officials said.
Some 1,700 people remained in shelters by yesterday morning as some 250 houses were damaged, local media said. The education ministry also told AFP that it would instruct education boards nationwide to inspect school buildings, after the death of the nine-year-old girl at her school.
More than 500 primary and secondary schools in Osaka and four other prefectures suffered damage to their buildings including collapsed ceilings and broken window glass, the ministry official said.
This combination picture shows waterworks officers checking a collapsed road on Monday (top) following an earthquake in Takatsuki, north of Osaka prefecture and vehicles moving on the repaired road yesterday.
