(REUTERS). Japan’s Prime Minister visited quake-hit Kumamoto prefecture in the country’s south on Monday (August 3), six days after a magnitude-7.1 tremor killed 38 people and left tens of thousands without water.
Takaichi said the government was working to maintain water supplies to medical and care facilities, and aimed to soon provide an update on when services would be restored more widely.
Kumamoto was previously hit by a major earthquake in 2016. While the death toll from last month’s quake has been far lower than the more than 260 that died in 2016, nearly half of the deaths occurred in commercial facilities.
Nine people were killed at Nippon Paper Industries' paper mill near the epicentre, which suffered major structural damage that saw its smokestack topple over.
A further seven died at Aeon's shopping mall, the biggest in the prefecture, where a possible gas explosion occurred more than an hour after the initial quake.
Posted by: Alma Angeles/NET25 News
