Japanese live in fear after killer quake

STRONG aftershocks rattled Japan’s main island yesterday as residents cleared out debris after a powerful earthquake on Sunday killed at least one person and injured more than 200 people.

Troops, firefighters and police searched in light rain for missing people and worked to restore key services such as the water supply.

The region has been hit by more than 200 aftershocks since Sunday’s initial 6.9-magnitude earthquake, including tremors yesterday that registered 4.8 and 5.3 on the Richter scale, said the Meteorological Agency.

“I’m so scared that I can’t even go into my own house,” said Kazuko Mori, staring at her half-collapsed home in Wajima, around 300km west of Tokyo.

More than 2,600 people spent a restless night in emergency shelters after hundreds of buildings were damaged on the Noto peninsula, which is on the west coast of Japan’s main island of Honshu.

“I couldn’t sleep well last night as I woke up with fear every time an aftershock occurred,” said Chiezo Seto, a 56-year-old rice cracker maker.

“My wife and I just finished cleaning up the shattered glass inside my house and now I’m working on fixing my factory. I’m afraid it will take some time to get back to normal.”

Some residents tried to shovel away rubble scattered on roads, while others waited outside and looked at one another nervously after every aftershock.

“There’s no electricity, no water, no telephone line. We’re at a total loss,” said Misako Nishikawa, a 65-year-old housewife who lives on a pension with her husband adjacent to a house that collapsed yesterday.

She said: “I’m too scared to enter my house as aftershocks were shaking it. I don’t know how long it will take to recover our lives.”

Prime minister, Shinzo Abe, pledged to assist the victims.

“I will do my utmost to support the victims of the quake and to reconstruct the damaged region,” he told a parliamentary committee.