Japan earthquake death toll hits 161

The death toll from Japan’s New Year’s Day earthquake jumped to 161 on Monday, January 8, as snow complicated relief efforts with more than 2,000 people still cut off and many others lacking power or in crowded emergency shelters.

Authorities said 103 people were still missing after the 7.5-magnitude quake that toppled buildings, sparked a major fire and triggered tsunami waves over a metre high in the central Ishikawa region.

As of Sunday, almost a week later, more than 2,000 people were still cut off by the damage the quake and an estimated 1,000 landslides did to roads on the worst-hit Noto Peninsula.

In the last two days, the region has also been blanketed in snow, with some areas receiving more than 10 centimetres (four inches) overnight, making the operation harder still.

Against the odds, a woman in her 90s survived five days under the wreckage of a collapsed house in the city of Suzu before being saved on Saturday.

“Hang in there!” rescuers were heard calling to the woman, in police footage from the rainy scene published by local media.

“You’re gonna be OK! Stay positive!” they shouted.

Not all were so lucky, with Naoyuki Teramoto, 52, inconsolable on Monday after three of his four children’s bodies were discovered in the town of Anamizu.

“We were talking of plans to go to Izu,” a famous hot spring resort after his daughter passed her high school entrance exam, he said.

Japan experiences hundreds of earthquakes every year, though most cause no damage because of strict building codes in place for more than four decades.

But many structures are older, especially in rapidly ageing communities in rural areas like Noto.

The country is haunted by the monster quake of 2011 that triggered a tsunami, left around 18,500 people dead or missing and caused a nuclear catastrophe at the Fukushima plant.

The Star