Japan earthquake: Race to find survivors as rescue window closes – BBC News

Japan earthquake: Race to find survivors as rescue window closes – BBC News

Japan’s prime minister has announced that more troops are being deployed to help the victims of the devastating earthquake on New Year’s Day fumio kashida says the number of Defense Force personnel in the worst affected area would more than double to 4,600 at least 78 people have now been

Confirmed dead more than a dozen communities remain cut off by landslides and blocked roads in central Japan where the 7.5 magnitude Quake struck on Monday let’s hear some of what Mr kashida had to say at a news conference the situation in the affected area is very challenging but from the

Perspective of saving lives we are making all efforts to rescue and provide life-saving Aid to as many people as possible before the crucial 72-hour period following the disaster elapses this evening let’s go g McKenzie who’s in Noto Peninsula and the Prime Minister there describing it’s actually quite a difficult situation isn’t it

It is and actually that 72-hour window that we just heard Mr kashida talk about in the last few minutes that 72-hour window has closed it has now been 72 hours since the earthquake and this is the critical time because after this time the chance of finding people alive

Severely reduces uh which is really troubling for all the rescue workers who have been starting to look through these damaged homes because there are still many people missing and it’s thought that they are under these homes that have completely collapsed most of them are in the worst affected towns which

Are the north of this peninsula these towns of suzu and wajima now we actually managed to get into wajima yesterday and we saw a great deal of Destruction many of the old traditional wooden homes had completely shattered to the floor and the issue with these homes is that they

Were built before some of the regulations the building regulations were introduced here to help protect homes from earthquakes and a lot lot of the people living on this peninsula are elderly so a lot of them hadn’t done the work to update their homes and tell us a

Little bit about the aid efforts because presumably the damaged roads and the infrastructure has make it much more difficult to get help to people who need it that has been the real issue here over the past 3 days that the roads have been so damaged and this is a remote

Area we’re on a peninsula so already there were limited routes to reach people but the roads because they were so severely severed they cut off some of these towns now some of the roads have been reestablished but for example the search and rescue dogs they only arrived

In the town of wajima yesterday we know that there are still up to though a thousand people that are completely cut off so these are people living in very you know remote coastal areas or up in the mountains they are not managing to get any supplies at all so they’re

Having to survive by themselves so it may well be that the government now decides that this 7 2hour window has passed that this is where they want to redirect some of their efforts to try and rescue these people that are still alive but cut off there are also tens of

Thousands of people still living in shelters because their homes have either been completely destroyed or they are structurally unsound 30,000 people are still without power 100,000 people are still without water and we spoke to people yesterday inima who were saying that even at the shelter there there

Wasn’t enough food and water so there is an awful lot of work still to be done in terms of just getting basic supplies to people Jee Mackenzie thank you very much let’s go now to James Sims who’s a journalist and commentator based in Tokyo thanks very much for being with us

So we’ve heard from the Prime Minister and he’s painting quite a grim picture of the of the situation in some of the worst affected areas he’s under pressure on a lot of fronts isn’t he uh yes he is I he will be having his uh annual uh New Year’s conference uh

Which is usually held at the ISA Shrine which is like the most sacred Shrine in the shin Shinto religion um but because of the earthquake he’s going to hold one his new year’s press conference in Tokyo he just had one at noon after the uh emergency uh earthquake measures meeting

With all the cabinet ministers and so in terms of this year he’s got quite a bit on his plate he has to deal with the the earthquake and the disaster um he has a regular parliamentary session coming up in January uh the government has already approved uh some uh budget measures to

Help with the people affected by the Quake uh from uh budget reserves and and then he’s also facing a massive political fundraising Scandal within his party which took out several ministers last month and and does that mean that his his political position is actually in Jeopardy from what you

Describe uh yes he in some opinion polls he is in the teens in terms of support rate and there’s a sort of a rule of thumb uh which is named after a former uh Chief cabinet secretary 50% rule if uh the cabinet approval rating uh plus the ruling party his ruling party the

Liberal Democratic party if that falls below 50% and which which it has in many polls uh that will make his um Administration it will make the operation of his Administration very tough uh especially once the Parliamentary session starts and a lot of questions start flying at him regarding the political fundraising

Scandal just to go back to the earthquake though um how is the response deemed to have been so far is it is it deemed to have been a good response or what is the the impression that you’ve get I think it it’s been sort of a regular Japanese response um that

Peninsula because of it’s a peninsula um I’m sure there there’s limited roads and I know in some cases the uh earthquake caused uh great fissures in the ground and there’s been some separations of the ground up to like four meters and so I know the roads have been heavily hit but

I know that the self-defense forces or the the Japanese military has dispatched um over about two dozen planes and they’ve also sent some ships that have um roll on rolloff capability meaning they can send smaller boats to try to send Aid and they will also be able to

Land like trucks and other things uh with Aid and food and medical supplies and anything else that they might need James Sims thanks for joining us on BBC thank you

Rescuers in Japan have been racing against time in their search for survivors of a New Year’s earthquake, as a critical three day window has now closed.

Dozens of people were killed when a 7.6 magnitude earthquake hit the remote Noto peninsula on Monday at 16:10 local time (07:10GMT).

Many people are thought to be trapped under their collapsed homes – mostly in the towns of Suzu and Wajima.

After 72 hours, the chances of finding people alive drops substantially.

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