At least nine people died when an earthquake shook southwestern Japan’s Kyushu island late Thursday, the Kumamoto Prefecture disaster management office said.
Search crews scrambled to dig through rubble looking for people trapped under collapsed buildings.
The magnitude-6.2 quake struck near Ueki, the U.S. Geological Survey said. Dozens of smaller aftershocks followed.
“The ground shook for about 20 seconds before the 6.2-magnitude quake stopped,” witness Lim Ting Jie said.
Two deaths occurred in Mashiki, the Kumamoto Prefecture office said. One person died in a collapsed house, and the other died in a fire caused by the quake. Journalist Mike Fern told CNN that scores of buildings had either collapsed or caught fire, while the tremors triggered landslides, tore up roads and in one case, derailed a bullet train.
Nearly 800 people were injured, 50 severely. The prefecture office said 44,449 people had evacuated.
http://www.cnn.com/2016/04/14/asia/japan-earthquake/index.html