THE ASAHI SHIMBUN
January 15, 2024 at 13:48 JST
Medical workers from the Japanese Red Cross Society interview evacuees on Jan. 12 at a shelter in Wajima, Ishikawa Prefecture. (Tetsuaki Otaki)
Two weeks after the powerful New Year’s Day quake rocked the Noto Peninsula, about 19,000 people are still taking refuge at school gymnasiums, community centers and other makeshift evacuation shelters.
The number has significantly dropped from the peak of 34,000 as some evacuees are being relocated to more comfortable lodging such as hotels and inns.
Moving vulnerable people to safer accommodations is seen as essential as many of those displaced by the earthquake are languishing in spartan living conditions that threaten their health.
As of Jan. 14, 780 people had been moved to such hotels and inns, according to Ishikawa Prefecture, which opened a toll-free hotline (0120-266-755) on the same day for evacuees seeking such relocation.
In Wajima, about 300 residents were evacuated from their cut-off communities on Jan. 14. However, 490 remained isolated across 15 areas in Wajima, Suzu and Noto.
The damage to residential buildings, which is still under assessment, has increased to 12,443 buildings, up 1,146 from Jan. 13. The full extent of the damage in Suzu and Wajima remains unknown, as it is still being evaluated.
Water outages continue for about 55,000 households, mainly in the Noto region.
As of 2 p.m. on Jan. 14, officials confirmed 221 fatalities from the Jan. 1 earthquake. The figure includes 13 deaths believed to have not been a direct result of the magnitude-7.6 quake.
There were 99 casualties in Suzu, 88 in Wajima, 20 in Anamizu, six in Noto, five in Nanao, two in Shika and one in Hakui.
The prefecture will release the names of those who died in the earthquake, starting on Jan. 15, with the consent of their families.
The number of people who are missing or unaccounted for stood at 22.
The Noto Peninsula will see a strong winter weather pattern developing on Jan. 15 with occasional snowfall, according to the Kanazawa Local Meteorological Observatory.
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