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Police are looking for missing people on the site of a landslide after an earthquake in the city of Atsuma, Hokkaido, northern Japan on Thursday, September 6, 2018. A powerful earthquake struck on Thursday large areas of the main island of Hokkaido, in the far north of Japan. as well as the power loss. (Yu Nakajimai / Kyodo News via AP) (Associated Press)
TOKYO – A powerful earthquake rocked the main island of Hokkaido, north of Japan, on Thursday, causing landslides that crushed houses, destroyed electricity on the island and forced a nuclear power plant to use a backup generator.
The 6.7-magnitude earthquake struck southern Hokkaido at 3:08 Thursday at a depth of 40 kilometers (24 miles), the Japanese Meteorological Agency said. The epicenter was east of Tomakomai City, but the shocks also affected the prefectural capital of Hokkaido, Sapporo, which has 1.9 million inhabitants.
The fire and disaster agency said a man had been found without vital signs in Tomakomai and that several people were reported missing in the nearby town of Atsuma, where an important landslide occurred. At least 20 other people were injured in nearby towns.
The NHK national television channel broadcast footage of the quake hit Muroran, his camera shaking violently and all the lights in the city fading away a moment later. In Sapporo, a mudslide on a road left several cars half-buried.
Power has been eliminated for the 2.9 million inhabitants of Hokkaido. The Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry, Hiroshige Seko, told reporters that the major power outage was caused by an emergency shutdown of the main power plant that was providing half of the electricity to the whole of Hokkaido.
Public utility officials are starting up hydropower plants to help restart the main power plant, Seko added, adding that he needed to recover electricity "within hours". Meanwhile, authorities have sent patients as needed, he said.
In the town of Atsuma, a massive landslide on a mountain has destroyed houses below. Reconstruction Minister Jiro Akama told reporters that five people were reportedly buried under the landslide in Yoshino district, where 40 people were stranded, according to NHK television. Some of them were airlifted to safer locations, NHK said.
At least 76 people were injured and 19 others were missing, NHK said, citing its own record.
The secretary general of the cabinet, Yoshihide Suga, said at a press conference that the authorities had received hundreds of appeals concerning missing persons and buildings falling apart. Officials are doing everything possible for search and rescue, while assessing the extent of the damage, he added.
The central government has set up a working group on crisis management in the Prime Minister's Office.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told a meeting of the task force that 4,000 self-defense soldiers are deployed in Hokkaido to participate in search and rescue operations. The government will send an additional 20,000 people to the affected sites, he said.
The Japanese Nuclear Regulatory Authority has reported that three reactors at the Tomari NPP are offline for routine security checks, but are powered by backup generators that have been commissioned after lost their external power supply. 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 the external sources of energy and relief of the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant, causing collapses.
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