A powerful earthquake tore up hills, fields and roads in northern Japan on Saturday, killing at least seven people, injuring around 100 more and trapping guests at a levelled resort hotel. The earthquake, which measured 7.2 on the Richter scale, also caused a small leak of radioactive water from a power plant, although the company said there was no cause for public concern.
Japan deployed nearly 800 troops to the largely agricultural region in Miyagi and Iwate prefectures, where military helicopters plucked to safety residents, many of them elderly, who were suddenly cut off from the world.
Landslides snapped highways, which abruptly turned into cliffs of falling mud and dirt, and clogged rivers to create a series of "quake lakes." "I was driving my car when the earthquake hit," said Makoto Katsurashima, 72. "I just turned white as I saw the road disappear before my eyes a few metres (yards) away."
The quake, which struck just eight kilometres (five miles) underground, was strong enough to shake buildings in Tokyo, 350 kilometres (220 miles) to the south, and was followed by around 160 aftershocks.
"The top priority is to save lives," Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda said in Tokyo as he dispatched the military and his disaster minister. "We're doing our best in rescue operations." Six people were killed and another 90 were injured, officials said, while public broadcaster NHK put the number of injured at 162. The dead included two construction workers, aged 53 and 54, caught in a landslide, with their bodies retrieved hours afterwards.
The other dead included a 60-year-old man who rushed out of his home in panic and was hit by a truck. Twelve people remained missing including three foreigners, whose nationalities were unclear, who were out camping. The earthquake tore to pieces a hot-spring resort, which turned into a pile of wooden rubble with access cut off by a landslide.
Five people were rescued from the Komanoyu hotel in a remote scenic forest, two of them with broken bones, but several remained missing, police said.
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