Photo/Illutration A woman from Kanazawa prays on Jan. 31 in an area of Wajima, Ishikawa Prefecture, destroyed by fire after the Jan. 1 earthquake. (Nobuhiro Shirai)

KANAZAWA—One month after the devastating New Year's Day earthquake, the hardships continue in Ishikawa Prefecture, with more than 14,000 people still evacuating and about 40,000 households left without running water.

Recovery efforts have been hampered by severed roads and disrupted water service after the magnitude-7.6 temblor struck the Noto Peninsula on Jan. 1. 

Nearly 10,000 evacuees are still staying in school gymnasiums, community centers and other facilities designated as primary evacuation centers.

The remaining 4,792 have relocated to ryokan inns and other facilities mainly in the southern part of the prefecture.

The prefectural government plans to make 6,500 homes available, including prefabricated facilities and public housing units, within the prefecture by the end of March.

Officials estimate that there will be demand for more than 9,000 such emergency homes for survivors.

The earthquake left 238 people dead, 101 each in Wajima and Suzu, hard-hit cities in the northern part of the Noto Peninsula.

The figure includes 15 suspected disaster-related deaths from injuries and illnesses.

The National Police Agency has determined that the majority of the deaths came from victims being crushed beneath collapsed homes or suffocating under fallen structures. 

Nineteen people remain unaccounted for, although they may be out of contact for reasons other than the earthquake.

More than 46,000 homes were destroyed or damaged, but the number is expected to rise because exact figures from Wajima and Suzu are still being tallied.

The Japan Meteorological Agency on Jan. 25 revised the earthquake’s intensity in Wajima to 7, the highest on the Japanese seismic scale of 7, from the initially reported upper 6.

The agency earlier said an intensity of 7 was registered only in the town of Shika.

(This article was written by Yoshinori Doi, Eriko Nami and Takeshi Shimawaki.)

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