Japanese ’quake toll likely to exceed 100

Press, 28 May 1983, Page 8

Japanese ’quake toll likely to exceed 100

NZPA-Reuter Tokyo More than 100 people were feared dead as rescue workers resumed hunting yesterday for more victims of the tidal waves which smashed ashore after Japan’s strongest earthquake in 15 years. The police said that at least 41 had drowned in Thursday’s disaster, 61 were still missing and presumed dead, and at least 77 were injured.

The quake, measuring 7.7 on the Richter scale, rocked the main island of Honshu and northern Hokkaido.

Nearly 800 houses had been destroyed or damaged, hundreds more flooded, and 700 small boats sunk or damaged, the police said. One of the three-metre tidal waves engulfed 47 schoolchildren and two teachers playing on a beach near Akita and sucked them out to sea.

Thirty-four of the children were rescued almost immediately, but two bodies were found on Thursday and four more yesterday morning. The seven other youngsters were also feared drowned.

Patrol boats and helicopters joined a search at the port of Noshiro yesterday morning for 27 workers still missing after being engulfed by huge waves within minutes of the ’quake. They had been working from small boats at an electricity generating plant construction site. Six other workers were killed there.

The earthquake, which struck around noon, was the biggest to hit Japan since May, 1968, when another ’quake in the same area, registering 7.9 on the Richter scale, killed 52

people and injured 330. The epicentre of Thursday’s big quake was 224 km out in the Sea of Japan from Akita. Besides the loss of life the ’quake caused widespread damage, cracking roads in 220 places, affecting embankments at 17 sites, and interrupting electricity and water supplies. In Seoul, the South Korean capital, the police said that three people were feared dead and two others' were injured after tidal waves from the Japanese ’ouake had battered South Korea’s east coast.