A TOTAL of 1,400 firefighters have been deployed alongside 100 Self-Defence Force (SDF) personnel to battle mountain blazes in the northern part of the country, with the fires, now burning for a sixth straight day, continuing to threaten a picturesque coastal town.
The area consumed by the fires had reached 1,373ha as of early yesterday morning, up 7% from a day earlier.
The fires threaten residential districts of Otsuchi on the Pacific Coast – a town that lost nearly a tenth of its population in one of Japan’s worst disasters, the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami.
Evacuation orders are in place for 1,541 households or 3,233 residents, roughly a third of Otsuchi’s population.
“Although the Self-Defence Forces are fighting the fires from the sky (with helicopters), the dry weather and winds are helping the fires expand,” Otsuchi Mayor Kozo Hirano told a press conference yesterday.
One Otsuchi resident said he worried about the damage the fires could inflict.
“A fire burns everything down. With a tsunami, you might have something left after the destruction,” Yoshinori Komatsu, 74, said as he watched SDF helicopters dump water over fires in the distance.
The only casualty to date has been one minor injury suffered when a person fell at an evacuation centre, Japan’s Fire and Disaster Management Agency said on its website.
No rain is expected in the region until today, but a brief shower is forecast tomorrow, according to the Japan Meteorological Agency.
The cause of the fires is unclear and under investigation. — Reuters
