TOKYO (AP) – Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida staged a televised disaster drill yesterday based on a fictional earthquake in the capital region, as his country marked the centennial of the real-life 1923 Great Kanto Quake that killed more than 100,000 people.
The 7.9-magnitude earthquake that struck the Sagamihara area southwest of Tokyo on September 1, 1923, just before noon triggered a widespread inferno in the region, causing most of the victims to perish in the fire.
The blaze destroyed nearly 300,000 Japanese paper-and-wood homes as the country suffered major social and economic damage just as it was seeking to modernise.
Japanese officials are worried another devastating tremblor could happen again.
Yesterday, the drill simulated the aftermath of a fictional 7.3-magnitude tremblor in central Tokyo at 7am. Kishida and his Cabinet ministers, wearing matching light-blue uniforms, walked to the Prime Minister’s Office for an emergency response meeting to discuss initial measures with hypothetically hard-hit Sagamihara city, the 1923 epicentre.
Japan, which sits on the so-called Pacific “ring of fire,” is one of most quake-prone countries.
A magnitude 9.0 quake on March, 11, 2011, off Japan’s northeastern coast, triggered a massive tsunami, killed more than 18,000 and triggered a nuclear disaster.
Yesterday, earthquake drills were being conducted at municipalities and schools around the country. At elementary schools, children squatted under desks to protect their heads from falling objects.
Kishida joined a joint earthquake drill hosted by Sagamihara and joined by eight cities including Tokyo.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno told reporters that September 1 this year represents more than the centennial of the Great Kanto Quake.
It serves as a lesson to building structures with more resilience to quakes and fire, he said.
