Photo/Illutration Yutaka Kobayashi, second from right, attends to a patient in Suzu, Ishikawa Prefecture, on Jan. 2. (Provided by Sakura General Hospital)

Yutaka Kobayashi has rushed to several disaster areas over the years to provide emergency medical care, but the situation he encountered in the Noto Peninsula region of Ishikawa Prefecture is “the worst ever,” he said.

Kobayashi, who heads Sakura General Hospital in Oguchi, Aichi Prefecture, assembled a small team and set off Jan. 2 for Suzu, one of the hardest hit areas from the magnitude-7.6 earthquake that hit on New Year’s Day.

The situation there was nothing like what he experienced after the magnitude-9.0 Great East Japan Earthquake of 2011 that claimed nearly 20,000 lives or the magnitude-7.0 Kumamoto Earthquake in 2016 that killed close to 300 people.

Kobayashi and his staff arrived at Suzu General Hospital around 8 p.m. to find the waiting area full of people waiting for medical treatment as well as evacuees huddling under blankets to keep warm.

The three or four doctors at the hospital providing outpatient emergency care had been working without a break, so Kobayashi, 50, took over that night and the one following to give the physicians well-deserved rest.

During that first night, ambulances and Self-Defense Force members brought in 20 or so patients. Some had suffered broken bones due to tsunami or being hit by rubble.

“The incoming waves swept me and my home away,” one person said.

Another said, “Somehow I managed to reach an evacuation center and finally make it to hospital.”

Over two nights, Kobayashi treated four patients injured by the tsunami.

Several patients being treated at the hospital had been rescued after lying trapped in their collapsed homes for more than a day. Some needed immediate treatment due to the danger of kidney failure from lying crushed under quake debris for so long.

A number of bodies were brought to the hospital. As the water supply was knocked out, all the nurse who accompanied Kobayashi could do was wipe them down with wet towels.

On Jan. 3 and 4, Kobayashi visited four evacuation centers during the day in Suzu. When he asked if anyone was hurt, Kobayashi was stopped several times and told to take a look at the evacuees.

He found three people between the ages of 40 and 90 who had broken hips and legs and arranged for them to be sent to hospital by ambulance immediately.

Kobayashi said the dire situation he witnessed stemmed from the fact damage was spread over a wide area that rendered roads impassable and prevented medical help from outside the region reaching those in need.

Eighteen disaster medical assistance teams had been dispatched to Suzu as of the morning of Jan. 5, the health ministry said.

Shoji Yokobori, a professor of emergency medicine at Nippon Medical School in Tokyo, also reached Noto on Jan. 2.

He expressed concern that many residents might die as an indirect result of the earthquake and tsunami because some areas were not receiving adequate food or medicine.

Yokobori also noted there were about 100 foreign nationals, including Vietnamese, at the evacuation centers who had varying degrees of fluency in the Japanese language.

His primary concern was an outbreak of infectious diseases in the days ahead due to a shortage of antimicrobials and kits to test for COVID-19 and influenza. He added that quarantining such patients was not a suitable option since the rooms might use up most of the heating fuel.

(This article was written by Yuki Edamatsu and Akiyoshi Abe.)

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