The video below taken by a Canadian tourist, shows a crowd reacting to one of the quake‘s aftershocks.
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A local resident rests with a pet dog at an evacuation center after an quake in Mashiki.
An natural disaster of magnitude 6 hit southern Japan on Thursday, bringing down some buildings and injuring dozens of people, local media reported, but the nuclear regulator reported no problems at power plants.
The Government said it had confirmed at least 761 people had been injured, at least 44 seriously. At this stage, Japanese authorities are reporting there is no tsunami risk.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said at least 19 houses had collapsed and officials were still assessing the extent of the damage.
An aerial view shows damaged houses in the town of Mashiki in Kumamoto prefecture, on April 15, 2016.
Despite today’s large quake, no tsuamis were reported – meaning damage was limited to the tremors.
A resident walks past collapsed houses in Mashiki, Kumamoto prefecture, southern Japan, Friday, April 15, 2016, after a magnitude-6.5 quake. At least two of the deaths occurred in the town of Mashiki, where the shaking was most severe. A third severely injured victim who was pulled from under a collapsed building is suffering from heart and lung failure.
Troops have been sent to the scene but rescue operations are being disrupted by aftershocks, officials said.
“There was a ka-boom and the whole house shook violently sideways”, Takahiko Morita, a resident of nearby town Mashiki, said in a telephone interview with public broadcaster NHK.
Watermelons fell from store shelves and lay crushed on the floor of a supermarket in Kumamoto city, near the epicenter, NHK footage showed.
He said he saw some walls around houses collapsing. Some wrapped blankets around their shoulders against the springtime chill.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told reporters that the government intends “to do our utmost and carry on with life-saving and rescue operations throughout the night”.
In addition, prefectural officials said that no abnormalities had been noticed at any of the nuclear facilities in the quake-affected areas.
No tsunami warning was issued after the quake struck, and nuclear power stations in Kyushu were apparently unaffected.
But Japan’s seismology office recorded the shaking at some places to be as intense as the huge magnitude 9 quake that hit the country in 2011.
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Local police and firefighters in the prefecture said that 20 houses had collapsed as a result of the quake, particularly in and in the vicinity of Mashiki, leaving people trapped beneath rubble and debris. He said the rattling started small but then grew violent, lasting about 30 seconds.
