Japanese woman in her 80s rescued from debris

An 80-year-old woman was rescued from the remains of her fallen house in Japan, three days after the earthquake on New Year’s Day.

The NHK news agency showed a video of a woman being carried out of her house in Wajima town.

Rescue workers are hurrying to find people who are still alive, but the time to find them is running out.

At least 82 people died when a very strong earthquake hit the Noto peninsula on Monday.

Many people are believed to be stuck under their fallen homes, mostly in the towns of Suzu and Wajima.

The old woman was stuck on the first floor of her house after the earthquake.

After 3 days, it’s unlikely to find people alive. The window is closed because there was an earthquake at 16:10 local time (07:10 GMT) on Monday.

Many people don’t have electricity and water, and some can’t get help because of landslides and blocked roads.

Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said on Thursday that 150 people have been saved and rescue teams will keep working hard to save more people.

This is a very hard situation. “But please try your best to save as many lives as you can by tonight, when it will be 72 hours since the disaster happened,” he said.

The earthquake on Monday hurt at least 330 people, and there were more smaller earthquakes afterward. This information comes from the AFP news agency.

More than 30,000 people who were affected by the earthquake are still living in shelters. Some towns don’t have water, electricity, or internet.

At the same time, exciting stories about saving people are spreading widely on the internet. A video shared by Peace Winds Japan, a local group that helps people, shows a group of rescuers clearing away debris to save a woman stuck under her house. They put a warm, thick blanket on her.

The BBC saw a lot of damage in Wajima on Wednesday. Some houses and cars were crushed by falling concrete. Please simplify this text. Lots of the town’s old, traditional wooden houses fell down.

Japan made new rules to keep buildings safe from earthquakes in 1981, but many wooden houses were built before these rules were made.

Some of the people in Wajima, many of them old, did not update their homes. In 2018, most of the buildings in the town did not meet the new standards.

Wajima has about 23,000 people. Many people left the town when they were told a tsunami might come. Now, Wajima looks like a ghost town because most people are gone.

But it has recorded the most deaths, with 48 confirmed deaths – more than half of the total number of casualties. The number is likely to go up because some areas near the town still have broken roads and landslides, so it’s hard for rescuers to reach people for help.

The mayor of Wajima said that only 2,000 out of 10,000 people who had to leave town have gotten food and other things they need.

The mayor of Suzu, a town with about 13,000 people, says that almost all of its houses are destroyed. About 90% are fully or mostly collapsed, said Masuhiro Izumiya.

A little wave hit the town just after the big earthquake.

Japan has a lot of earthquakes and the number of earthquakes around Noto has been going up since the end of 2020. In the last three years, there have been over 500 small and medium earthquakes in this area.