The death toll from two powerful earthquakes in southwest Japan rose to 48 on Wednesday, with rescuers continuing to search for several people reported missing for five days.
Advertisement
At least 42 people are known to have died after the earthquakes struck the island of Kyushu, officials said, and the missing are feared buried in houses that have been engulfed by landslides.
Kyodo news agency cited local government as saying that 104,900 people remained at shelters Monday morning, as the region was hit by more than 500 aftershocks since Thursday’s magnitude 6.5 quake.
At Renesas, hit by the quake on Saturday was its Kawashiri Fab (Kumamoto city, Kumamoto), engaged in front-end chip production using 8-inch wafers – mainly for microcontrollers used in automotive.
“I felt strong shaking at first, then I was thrown about like I was in a washing machine”, said a Tokai University student who remains isolated in the village of Minamiaso. “It’s better to be prepared than sorry, as we learned the hard way”, he said.
“We can’t take a bath, not even a shower”. The earthquake-affected supplier Aisin Seiki Co. made door and engine components at the plants in Kumamoto, and Toyota has yet to decide when it would resume operations, a Toyota spokesman said.
Toyota said it would suspend operations at most assembly plants across Japan.
Many others slept in their cars or sheltered under tarps and other protection overnight.
Despite the devastating earthquakes, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said on Monday he would stick to plans to raise sales tax from eight to 10 percent next year.
The search is focused on debris-strewn communities in a mountainous area near Mount Aso, the largest active volcano in Japan.
At Mitsubishi Electric’s Power Device Works (Kumamoto) in Koshi, Kumamoto Prefecture, production has been temporarily ceased since the night of April 14. The company said that the plants have reopened, but that it’s too early to say when they will return to full capacity.
The shutdown will begin today at a factory in Kyushu and progress to other plants in Japan through Friday.
Advertisement
Video from a drone flying high over the Japanese island of Kyushu depicts extensive damage to countryside infrastructure after last week’s powerful earthquakes. Japanese media reported that an estimated 400,000 households were without running water.
