A strong earthquake shakes Japan; at least 2 dead, dozens wounded

A spokesman for the Japanese government said two people had been confirmed dead following a powerful earthquake that shook the main island of Hokkaido in the north of the country. Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said research was under way for those missing after the earthquake triggered in dozens of landslides in the mountainous area near the epicenter.

The magnitude 6.7 earthquake in Hokkaido early Thursday morning also broke the energy on the North Island.

Aerial imagery showed areas of brown soil on many heavily forested mountains, crushed houses, farm buildings and roads buried by avalanches of mud, logs and other debris.

The Japanese national channel NHK, citing its own account, said 125 people were injured and about 20 of them were missing. The local Hokkaido disaster relief organization counted 48 wounded.

Several people were missing in the nearby town of Atsuma, where a huge landslide engulfed houses.

Reconstruction Minister Jiro Akama told reporters that five people are buried in the Yoshino neighborhood. Some of the 40 stranded people were airlifted to safer locations, the NHK said.

Aerial views have shown dozens of landslides in the vicinity, virtually every side of the mountain a rough brown area in the middle of a deep green forest.

The airports and many roads on the island were closed after the morning earthquake.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said 25,000 troops and other personnel were being sent to the area to assist in relief operations.

The national broadcaster NHK showed the moment the quake hit the city of Muroran, with its camera shaking violently and all the lights of the city going black at a later date. In Sapporo, a mudslide on a road left several cars half-buried.

Power has been eliminated for the 2.9 million Hokkaido households. The Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry, Hiroshige Seko, told the press that the power outage was due to an emergency shutdown of the main power plant that powers the power plant. half of the electricity of Hokkaido.

Utilities have started hydroelectric plants, Seko added, adding that he hoped to recover the current "within hours". In the meantime, the authorities sent electric motor vehicles to hospitals, which allowed them to treat patients in case of emergency, he said.

The secretary general of the cabinet, Yoshihide Suga, said at a press conference that the authorities were doing everything possible to save and assess the damage after receiving hundreds of appeals about missing persons and the collapse of buildings.

The central government has set up a working group on crisis management in the Prime Minister's Office.

Three reactors at the Tomari nuclear power plant were off-line for routine security checks, but they operate with backup generators that were put into service after a power outage. The fuel used in the storage pools has been safely cooled thanks to the emergency power supply that can last a week, the agency said.

The powerful earthquake and tsunami of March 2011, which hit northeastern Japan, destroyed both the external and emergency energy sources of the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant, causing collapses.