Japan earthquake: Woman in her 90s discovered alive five days later under debris

A woman who is 90 years old was found alive under a collapsed building five days after a big earthquake hit central Japan.

Rescuers found her in a damaged two-story building in the town of Suzu.

A big earthquake with a magnitude of 7. 5 hit the coast of Japan’s sea on Monday. It caused a lot of damage to the towns on the Noto peninsula.

Over 120 people have been found dead, and 200 more are missing.

The newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun reported that 100 people were sent to the town of Suzu to rescue two women who were trapped underground.

The newspaper said that the old lady was talking and awake, but she might have hypothermia. They got this information from the local police.

At the same place, rescuers also found a woman in her 40s who was not breathing and her heart had stopped beating, reports said.

The first 3 days of a rescue are very important because after that, it’s unlikely to find people alive. The two women were discovered several days after the window was closed.

The military in Japan is using helicopters to help people in isolated areas. They are also using the helicopters to bring supplies to those areas because many roads are still closed.

As said by NHK, it might be difficult to rescue people because of the expected rainy weather in some areas affected by the earthquake on Sunday. Officials are cautioning that even a little rain could cause more landslides.

They also said that it will get very cold on Sunday and it might snow in the mountainous areas of Ishikawa prefecture until Monday.

Over 30,000 people are living in shelters run by the government.

As of Saturday, about 23,200 homes had no power in Ishikawa, and over 66,400 didn’t have running water.

Hiroshi Hase, the governor of Ishikawa, said that the area is in big trouble during a meeting about handling disasters.

He said it will take a long time to fix the water because there are many pipes with holes.

Some nursing homes and places that help elderly and disabled people are also without electricity and running water.

Japan has a lot of earthquakes, and there have been more of them near Noto since the end of 2020. Over the last three years, there have been over 500 small and medium earthquakes in that area.