On Saturday, authorities ended a massive dayslong search-and-rescue operation at the Aeon Mall in the town of Kashima, after extracting five people and the bodies of seven others. The site was one of the hardest-hit sites, after an explosion that followed the quake caused the walls and a floor to collapse.
The explosion, which the company said it believes was due to a gas leak, occurred after about 3,000 shoppers had been evacuated to a parking lot following the quake, but some employees remained inside. The mall’s second floor collapsed.
The overall number of missing in the hit prefecture remains unknown, and search operations pressed on, with thousands of Self-Defence troops, police, rescue workers and sniffing dogs deployed.
Takaichi urged rescue personnel not to leave anyone behind.
At another hard-hit site in Kumamoto Prefecture, a chimney collapsed at the Nippon Paper Industries factory in Yatsushiro city, trapping 11 employees. Nine have since been confirmed dead and two were rescued, officials said.
The earthquake has left 105 people injured in Kumamoto, authorities said, and two in addition to the reported deaths are being investigated to determine if they are quake-related.
The prefecture said reports of power loss have fallen to fewer than 900 households, but the local power company serving Kyushu said it had no immediate reports of outages.
Over 180 homes were destroyed, officials said, and more than 3,800 buildings were damaged, with 20 of them severely affected, according to Kumamoto prefectural assessments.
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