‘The shaking was terrifying’: stories of survival and loss emerge after Japan earthquake

Rescuers pulling people from the wreckage in southern Japan in a haunting repeat of disaster that struck 10 years ago

‘Race against time’: Japan earthquake death toll rises as rescue teams search for missing

“T here was a voice coming from the collapsed house, and I could see a hand,” Tomohide Nagata, a volunteer firefighter, told the Kumamoto Nichinichi Shimbun. “One of our senior members crawled in and pulled him out. He was bleeding from the head, but I’m so glad he survived.”

Nagata had heard a noise coming from one completely flattened home in the rural town of Hikawa, close to the epicentre of Tuesday’s 6.8-magnitude earthquake in southern Japan. The town was one of the areas hardest hit, with numerous older houses collapsing. Terrified of the ongoing aftershocks, many residents spent Tuesday night in their cars outside Hikawa’s town hall, where staff distributed food and drinks.

At least 13 people were killed and hundreds injured when the earthquake struck the island of Kyushu. The prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, said on Wednesday: “There are people who are still waiting to be rescued, and it’s a race against time. We will go all out to find and rescue as many people as we can.”

Iwaoka Shigemi, 79, and his wife, Michiyo, 77, had escaped from their house and spent the night sleeping in their car in Hikawa, according to the Mainichi Shimbun. With temperatures expected to reach 35C on Wednesday, they were now worried about the risk of heatstroke.

Suemi Nagata, 79, was unable to escape Hikawa by car because her garage had been destroyed but had made it to the town hall with her husband and older sister. “The lateral shaking was worse than the Kumamoto earthquake 10 years ago, and it was terrifying,” she told the town’s local newspaper. “Just to have survived with my life is something to be grateful for.”

In April, the prefecture of Kumamoto commemorated the 10th anniversary of the 2016 earthquake that killed more than 275 people and caused widespread devastation. In that case, a 6.2-magnitude foreshock was followed two days later by the deadly 7-magnitude quake, something that will be on the mind of tens of thousands across Kumamoto in the week ahead.

At the Kumamoto Aeon mall, which was severely damaged by what is understood to have been a gas explosion triggered by the earthquake, a number of employees had gone back inside after evacuating customers and were caught in the blast.

A 16-year-old girl who got out with other shoppers moments before the explosion, told the Asahi Shimbun she “felt completely safe once she was outside”, only to be left struggling to breathe by dust and smoke.

A 74-year-old man who often shopped at the mall told the Nikkei newspaper that he had just learned that an acquaintance who worked there was hurt. “I could have been caught up in it myself,” he said.

Up to 30 employees were initially reported trapped inside and four remain missing.

In nearby Uki City, which also experienced shaking ranked at the maximum 7 on the Japanese shindo scale, residents told of lucky escapes and heartbreaking unsuccessful rescue efforts.

A woman in her 40s had managed to get to an evacuation shelter with three generations of her family after putting herself between falling furniture and her children. “I was pinned under a chest of drawers at home. I protected my children and then hurried to evacuate,” she told the Kumamoto Nichinichi Shimbun from Toyono elementary school, which was being used as an evacuation shelter after the ceiling of the local disaster facility fell in.

On Tuesday evening as neighbours and relatives attempted to check in on each other, residents in the Asakawa district of Uki found one house flattened, with roof tiles scattered on the ground around where it had once stood. As family members looked on, a handful of volunteer firefighters attempted to rescue an elderly man trapped inside.

“The man is a childhood friend of mine,” the visibly shaken 70-year-old head of the local district told the Kumamoto newspaper. “We tried to pull him out, but the aftershocks came one after another, so we had no choice but to give up.”

As in Hikawa, many Uki residents slept in their cars, and local government workers handed out water and food. Unable to use the damaged disaster facility, the city set up a makeshift response headquarters in a car park.

In Yatsushiro, south of Hikawa, one man’s life may have been saved by his schedule when his workplace, a single-storey wooden structure, collapsed. “It was a day off and I wasn’t at work, so I escaped with my life,” said the self-employed man, 63, who spent the night in a tent pitched in his garden. “Though I have no idea what I’ll do starting tomorrow.”