Rescuers with dogs search for survivors after Japan's deadly earthquake

TOKYO (Reuters) – On Friday, rescuers with dogs searched for survivors in landslides caused by an earthquake on the island of Hokkaido in northern Japan, while electricity was returned a little more half of the households.

The NHK public television channel counted 12 people, five of them unanswered. Earlier, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe had said that 16 people had died, but the cabinet's chief secretary, Yoshihide Suga, said later that nine people had been confirmed and nine others were undergoing cardiopulmonary arrest. .

Another 24 people were still missing after the pre-dawn magnitude 6.7 earthquake, the last deadly natural disaster to hit Japan in the past two months, after typhoons, floods and a record heat wave.

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Nearly 5,000 residents of Hokkaido spent the night in evacuation centers where food was distributed in the morning.

"It was a scary night with many aftershocks, but we were encouraged by being together and now we are grateful to have food," said a woman on the public channel NHK.

Some 22,000 rescuers have been working all night searching for survivors, Abe said at an emergency meeting on Friday. With rain forecast for Friday afternoon and Saturday, he urged people to pay attention to loose earth that could cause the collapse of unstable homes or new landslides.

"We will devote all our energy to saving lives," Abe said.

Friday afternoon, Hokkaido Electric Power Co had given energy to 1.54 million households out of the 2.95 million inhabitants of the island. The public service was aiming to raise this figure to 2.4 million, or more than 80% by the end of Friday, said Industry Minister Hiroshige Seko.

Flights resumed at noon at Hokkaido's main airport, New Chitose. The island, which is the size of Austria and has 5.3 million inhabitants, is a popular tourist destination known for its mountains, lakes, farmland and seafood.

LANDSLIDES WRECK HOMES

Soldiers in fatigues and orange rescuers searched for survivors, passing through debris on huge mounds of earth near the epicenter of Atsuma, in southern Hokkaido. Aerial images show rescuers accompanied by dogs crossing the destruction.

All the missing people are from the Atsuma region, where dozens of landslides have destroyed homes and other structures and left hills barren.

"I just hope that they can find it quickly," said an unidentified man at NHK while he was looking for his missing neighbor's search.

The earthquake damaged the large Tomato-Atsuma plant, which normally supplies half of Hokkaido's energy and is near the epicenter, forcing it to shut down automatically. This caused such instability in the network that it triggered all the other power plants on the island, causing a total blackout.

Hokkaido Electric has brought back other smaller factories and has also received electricity transferred by submarine cables from the main island of Honshu.

Kansai International Airport, in western Japan, has been shut down since Typhoon Jebi struck Osaka on Tuesday, although some domestic flights operated by Japan Airlines Co Ltd and low-cost carrier ANA Holdings Inc. Peach Aviation resumed Friday.

JR Hokkaido planned to resume high-speed train operations from noon. He was also trying to pick up other train services on Friday afternoon, a spokesman said.

Manufacturers were still affected by power outages.

Toyota Motor Corp's Tomakomai plant, which makes transmissions and other parts, said its operations were suspended indefinitely until power was restored, a spokesman said.

The activities of Toppan Printing Co Ltd in a factory in Chitose, which makes food packaging, will remain suspended until it regains power, said a spokesman.

The earthquake led Japan's Self-Defense Forces to cancel two joint military exercises in Hokkaido, including the first exercise with Australian warplanes and a training exercise with the US Marine Corps.

A football match between Japan and Chile, scheduled for Friday in Sapporo, the main city of Hokkaido, has also been canceled.