Japan quake survivors found amid ongoing rescue efforts as experts warn of disease, death

Key PointsA man was pulled out 72 hours after a series of powerful quakes.The number of missing was lowered to 211 as of Saturday, after it shot up two days ago.Thousands of Japanese troops have joined the effort to reach the hardest-hit spots.

The death toll from a major earthquake in western Japan has reached 100, as rescue workers fight aftershocks to carefully pull people from the rubble.

Deaths had reached 98 earlier on Saturday, but two more deaths were reported in Anamizu, while officials in Ishikawa prefecture, the hardest-hit region, held their daily meeting to discuss strategy and damages.

Some survivors who had clung to life for days were freed from collapsed homes.

An older man was found alive on Wednesday in a collapsed home in Suzu, one of the hardest-hit cities in Ishikawa Prefecture. His daughter called out, “Dad, dad,” as a flock of firefighters got him out on a stretcher, praising him for holding on for so long after Monday’s 7.6 magnitude earthquake.

A man was pulled out 72 hours after a series of powerful quakes started rattling Japan’s western coast. Others were forced to wait while rescuers searched for loved ones.

The number of missing was lowered to 211 as of Saturday, after it shot up two days ago.

Thousands of Japanese troops have joined the effort to reach the hardest-hit spots on the Noto Peninsula, the centre of the quake, connected by a narrow land strip to the rest of the main island of Honshu.

Experts warned of disease and even death at the evacuation centres that now house about 34,000 people who lost their homes, many of them older.

Thousands of Japanese troops have joined the effort to reach the hardest-hit spots on the Noto Peninsula, the centre of the quake. Source: AAP / AP

Hundreds of people were in government shelters.

“We are doing our best to conduct rescue operations at the isolated villages… However, the reality is that the isolation has not been resolved to the extent that we would like,” regional governor Hiroshi Hase said Friday.

Dozens of aftershocks have rattled Ishikawa and the neighbouring region in the past week. Japan, with its crisscrossing fault lines, is an extremely quake-prone nation.

Weather forecasts called for rain and snow over the weekend, and experts warned of more aftershocks.

Ishikawa officials said 59 of those who died were in the city of Wajima and 23 were in Suzu, while the others were reported in five neighbouring towns. More than 500 people have been injured, at least 27 seriously.

Japan experiences hundreds of earthquakes every year and most cause no damage, with strict building codes in place for more than four decades.

Earthquakes have hit the Noto region with intensifying strength and frequency over the past five years.

The country is haunted by a massive 9.0 magnitude undersea quake in 2011, which triggered a tsunami that left around 18,500 people dead or missing.

It also swamped the Fukushima atomic plant, causing one of the worst nuclear disasters in history.

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