23 dead in quakes; Japan reels

OJIYA, Japan - Yoshikazu Ogawa stood outside the pile of rubble that was once his home, poking around the plaster and wood that had suddenly come crashing down on his two minivans when a series of earthquakes hit northern Japan, killing at least 23 people and injuring some 2,000.

"We've got nothing," he said Sunday, one day after a magnitude 6.8 quake flattened his home and neighborhood in Ojiya, a town of 40,000 about 160 miles northwest of Tokyo. "Our house is destroyed. We have no electricity, no toilet, no telephone."

Like some 64,000 other people, Ogawa said he and his family planned to spend the night in one of hundreds of makeshift evacuation centers.

Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi pledged that the government would set aside funding for reconstruction. Officials estimated it would take weeks to rebuild roads, bridges and homes and restore essential services.

The quake hit just after sunset Saturday in Niigata prefecture (state) on the northwestern coast of Japan's main island.

Several strong quakes followed through the night as a near-total blackout enveloped about 280,000 households, and aftershocks continued jolting the area Sunday.

The Japanese government said 23 people were killed and 1,232 were injured. The dead included five children, the youngest a 2-month-old infant. Public broadcaster NHK reported that some 2,000 people were injured.

The injured overwhelmed local hospitals, where patients were being treated in the hallways. Saturday's quake also flattened dozens of homes, tore through the pavement of local roads and highways and caused landslides that left whole villages cut off from the outside world.

Two trains derailed, but no injuries were reported. One was a bullet train, the first to jump its tracks since Japan began running such trains in 1964.

Military helicopters airlifted stranded villagers from a riverside hamlet, Shiotani, that was cut off when the bridge connecting it to Ojiya was toppled. Several other villages were isolated, including Yamagoshi, a mountain village of 600, where a landslide swept away the only road and upended homes and cars. Residents awaited airlifted food and other supplies.

The quake was the most devastating to strike Japan since 1995, when more than 6,000 were killed in the port city of Kobe.

Attesting to the power of the quake, the cement tubing of a manhole had been driven upward and stood some 3 feet above the surrounding pavement on a street near one flattened home. Power lines sagged to the ground from teetering utility poles.

Japan's Meteorological Agency registered 309 aftershocks - most too weak to be felt - and warned that another temblor of similar power could hit the region over the next week.

Japan, which straddles several tectonic plates, is among the world's most quake-prone nations.

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