NANAO, Japan: More than 50 people were reported missing on Thursday (Jan 4) as Japanese rescuers battled to reach hundreds still cut off from help three days after a devastating earthquake left at least 78 dead.
As the frantic search for survivors continues, more than a dozen communities remained isolated by landslides and blocked roads in central Japan, where the 7.5-magnitude quake struck on Monday.
The powerful main tremor, followed by hundreds of aftershocks, injured at least 330 people, local authorities said.
Authorities also published a list on Thursday of 51 people whose whereabouts could not be confirmed.
Further scenes of destruction were seen by AFP in the coastal town of Anamizu, including cars crushed under crumbling concrete and whole facades torn off three-storey structures.
Thousands of soldiers, firefighters and police officers from across Japan combed through the rubble of collapsed wooden houses and toppled commercial buildings for signs of life.
About 29,000 households were without electricity in Ishikawa prefecture on the Sea of Japan coast, and more than 110,000 homes across Ishikawa and two neighbouring regions had no water.
Access was blocked to small communities in the hardest-hit Noto Peninsula region – with 300 people desperately waiting for aid at a school in the town of Ooya in the Suzu area.
“Even if I give my food to my children, it is not enough at all. I have eaten almost nothing for the past two days,” a woman in her 30s with three children in Suzu told the Asahi Shimbun newspaper.
Source: CNA
