Massive earthquake in Kumamoto, Japan

Massive earthquake of magnitude 6.5 hit Kumamoto prefecture, Kyushu island, last night at 9:26 pm Japan time. According to the meteorological bureau, scale of an earthquake was measured as 7. Measured 7 earthquake does not happen so often even in Japan. It was only in 1995 in Kobe, 2004 in Niigata and 2011 in Tohoku. So it was quite strong earthquake. However, as its epicenter was inland, there were no fear of Tsunami.

Since then till this morning, there are more than 100 aftershocks including very small ones.  At this moment, according to news reports, 9 people lost their lives. May they rest in Peace. 

There are also number of reports of injuries and quite many houses are destroyed. Caritas Japan is continuing to gather information from the area at this moment. Kumamoto prefecture is under Fukuoka diocese and Caritas Japan will continue to communicate with the diocesan director of Caritas. As for Catholic Church facilities in Kumamoto, there are no serious reports of damages at this moment, though we do not have any information of members of Catholic community in Kumamoto. As far as what we see from TV reports this morning, most of damages are concentrated in one town, Mashiki.

Usually, for such emergencies, local government together with national government is ready to offer assistance to the victims without any delay. Self Defense Force, police and fire department in general are well trained and well eqquiped to take immediate action once such disaster happened in Japan. Local NGOs have their own role to play at this moment, however, other NGOs from out side the area would have much more role to play for rehabilitation phase of the disaster.