Nine dead, nearly 1,000 hurt in Japan quake

FE Team | Published: July 18, 2007 00:00:00 | Updated: February 01, 2018 00:00:00

Japanese residents of Kashiwazaki look at their collapsed house Tuesday.

TOKYO, July 17 (AFP): The official death toll from a powerful earthquake that struck central Japan on Monday has risen to nine.
Six women and three men, all in their 70s or 80s, died from injuries sustained in the earthquake, a National Police Agency spokesman said on Tuesday.
At least 979 people were hurt and taken to hospitals in Niigata and Nagano prefectures, the spokesman said, while local authorities separately said one person was still missing.
The quake, registering 6.8 on the Richter scale, hit northwest of Tokyo Monday morning, destroyed some 340 buildings, local authorities said.
It also damaged a major nuclear plant in the area, causing a fire and a leak of mildly radioactive water.
Meanwhile: Japan said today it would look at strengthening quake resistance at nuclear power plants after a powerful tremor caused a radiation leak.
"We want to speed up work to confirm if they can be resistant to the various strengths and various scenarios of earthquakes," Economy, Trade and Industry Minister Akira Amari told a news conference.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuhisa Shiozaki separately said:
"We have to respond firmly by carefully assessing how widely (the earthquake) went beyond our expectations."
Japan is hit by 20 percent of the world's powerful earthquakes and last year started updating its safety codes for nuclear plants.
Monday's earthquake registered 6.8 on the Richter scale, killing nine people and causing smoke to billow for hours out of the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear plant, the largest in the world.
Operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. Inc. (TEPCO), the world's biggest private power company, admitted late Monday a "slight amount" of radioactive water leaked into the Sea of Japan (East Sea) but said there was no danger.
Amari summoned TEPCO president Tsunehisa Katsumata to his ministry today and issued a verbal warning over the length of time it took to put out the fire.
"This may cause people to distrust nuclear power," Amari said. "We will not have the plant resume operations without confirming safety."
The TEPCO president replied: "I'm afraid there was weakness in our extinguishing measures."