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Elderly resident helped by rescuers in Ojiya
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Doctors say the death toll from Japan's string of earthquakes is rising partly because some of the elderly cannot handle the stress of living in shelters. As of Tuesday 31 people have died and more than 3,400 have been treated in hospitals.
More than 100,000 survivors, many complaining of exhaustion and cold, are spending another night in makeshift shelters, their cars or outdoors on the Sea of Japan Coast. Temperatures are dropping within a few degrees of freezing and it has been drizzling.
Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi Tuesday took a helicopter to the Niigata (Prefecture) area, which suffered damage last week from a typhoon prior to Japan's deadliest earthquake in a decade.
Stopping in the community of Ojiya, the hardest hit town, Mr. Koizumi said his government would consider issuing fresh bonds to finance an extra budget for disaster relief.
Mr. Koizumi said that after trying to comfort some of those in the shelters it is painfully clear the government must work hard to get their lives back to normal as soon as possible.
Japan's Disaster Management minister is defending what critics call a slow, disorganized and inadequate response by the government to help remote communities devastated by the quakes. Yoshitaka Murata says the government has been providing significant relief supplies, including more than 300,000 meal packages and 10,000 blankets.
Seismologists are warning the worst may not be over for the area 250 kilometers northwest of Tokyo.
Earthquake section chief Masahiro Yamamoto at the Japan Meteorological Agency says the number of aftershocks decreased Tuesday but scientists are still concerned.
Mr. Yamamoto said people in the communities who have been requested to evacuate their homes should not return yet because there is a 20 percent chance of another damaging quake within the next several days.
The initial tremor Saturday registered 6.8 on the Richter scale.
In the town of Kawaguchi, one of 40 small communities cut off due to damaged roads and landslides, residents scrawled a giant SOS on the road with an appeal for bread, water, diapers and medicine. Some relief supplies have now arrived there by wheelbarrow.
VOA News
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