The death toll from the powerful earthquake in southwest Japan rose to 28, the Japanese government announced Thursday, July 30, specifying that this total included “people whose deaths are still being investigated to determine whether they are linked to the earthquake.”
Hundreds of rescuers also continued their efforts after the 7.1 magnitude earthquake on Tuesday afternoon to reach possible survivors in the ruins of a shopping center in Kashima, in the department of Kumamoto.
Tuesday’s earthquake caused extensive damage on the island of Kyushu, destroying homes, damaging bridges, starting fires and depriving tens of thousands of residents of electricity and water.
A series of aftershocks have rocked the region since the initial tremor, further straining residents under sweltering summer temperatures expected to reach at least 35C later today.
The mall was evacuated after the earthquake, but about 50 minutes later the facility was devastated by a massive explosion while an unknown number of employees were still inside.
Businessman Fumihiko Matsuura, 56, said he saw the latest “Toy Story” movie at the mall about a week ago. “I was here very recently,” he told AFP. “It’s like I narrowly escaped danger.”
Footage from inside showed rescuers in orange jumpsuits and white helmets moving cautiously through twisted steel rods, dangling cables and gutted ceilings.
A train derailed and overturned in Yatsushiro, Kumamoto Prefecture, on July 29, 2026, after an earthquake struck southwest Japan the day before. © Yuichi Yamazaki, AFP
Five deaths were also confirmed and four other people were missing at the Nippon Paper Industries factory in the town of Yatsushiro, where part of a red and white chimney collapsed, a government official told AFP on Wednesday.
As of Wednesday afternoon, some 31,200 homes and facilities were still without power, while 84,000 homes were experiencing water supply disruptions, according to authorities. Television images showed people queuing to buy gasoline and drinking water.
The United States Geological Survey (USGS) put the earthquake’s magnitude at 6.8, lower than Japan’s estimate of 7.1. The Kumamoto department was already hit in 2016 by two devastating earthquakes which left 273 dead and more than 2,800 injured.
Situated at the junction of four major tectonic plates along the western edge of the Pacific “Ring of Fire”, Japan is one of the countries most exposed to earthquakes. With around 125 million inhabitants, it generally records several hundred seismic tremors each year, around 18% of the earthquakes recorded in the world. The vast majority of them are of low intensity, even if the damage they cause varies depending on their location and the depth at which they occur below the earth’s surface.
Japan remains marked by the gigantic underwater earthquake, magnitude 9, which occurred in 2011, which triggered a tsunami that left some 18,500 people dead or missing and caused the disaster at the Fukushima nuclear power plant.
With AFP
