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TOKYO (Reuters) – Energy was restored early Saturday morning in almost all customers of the island of Hokkaido, in northern Japan, two days after the earthquake that caused a Power failure throughout the island and caused the death of at least 21 people.
An aerial view shows the city of Sapporo during the power outage after an earthquake in the Sapporo region of Hokkaido. Kyodo / via REUTERS
But the impact of Thursday's 6.7-magnitude earthquake was expected to last, as Toyota Motor plans to shut down operations in 16 of 18 assembly plants due to the closure of a parts plant.
Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said the number of confirmed deaths was 21, with six people on cardiopulmonary arrest – a term used in Japan to describe the condition of the victim before the official death – and 13 people reported missing.
The earthquake caused landslides that buried homes and paralyzed Hokkaido with widespread power cuts and transportation, the latest natural disaster to hit Japan after typhoons, floods and deadly heat waves during last two months.
Toyota Motor announced Monday the suspension of work on its 16 factories due to the closure of its transmission plant in Tomakomai Hokkaido following the earthquake.
The company said it would later decide to extend stops beyond Monday.
Suga has called on companies and the 5.3 million people in Hokkaido to save about 10 percent of energy compared with Monday, when use will increase, and said the government would probably use power outages if demand threatened to exceed supply capacity.
This would be the first use of power outages in Japan to cope with power shortages since March 2011, when a magnitude 9 earthquake and tsunami caused the Fukushima nuclear disaster. .
Hokkaido Electric said the power supplies had been restored throughout the island to 2.93 million customers Saturday morning, leaving only 20,000 customers without electricity.
According to the Ministry of Commerce, the supplier will have facilities up to 3.6 GW by the end of Saturday, which is still far from the peak demand of 3.8 GW before the earthquake.
A Japanese refiner, Idemitsu Kosan Co, is preparing to resume deliveries of truck products to the Hokkaido refinery (150,000 barrels a day), said a company official.
Refinery operations have been suspended since Thursday.
Report by Osamu Tsukimori and Maki Shiraki; Edited by Sandra Maler, Robert Birsel
