Update: Japan Deadly Earthquake Death Toll Hits 19, Rescuers Race Against Time

Update: Japan Deadly Earthquake Death Toll Hits 19, Rescuers Race Against Time

japan quake rescuersRescue crews scrambled through rubble Saturday in a race against time for survivors of a magnitude-7.0 earthquake that struck Japan’s Kyushu Island, the same region rattled by a 6.2 quake two days earlier.

The death toll in the Kyushu earthquake rose to 19 people, according to Kumamoto Prefecture’s disaster management office.

The earthquake toppled buildings and shredded structures into pile of debris. At least 23 people were buried inside buildings, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said .

TV Asahi showed crews crawling over a collapsed roof in an attempt to find an elderly couple. An 80-year-old man was pulled from the rubble, TV Asahi said.

The tremors appear to have caused extensive damage, overturning cars, splitting roads and triggering a landslide as shown by TV Asahi footage. The area was rocked by as many as 165 aftershocks, some of them as strong as magnitude-5.3 struck in the hours after the quake.

Television images showed mostly desolate streets, shards of broken glass on the streets and people huddled outside.

Japan’s Fire and Disaster Management Agency said 7,262 people have sought shelter at 375 centers since Friday in Kumamoto Prefecture. Suga said 20,000 self-defense forces are being deployed to the region for rescue efforts.

Japan’s “Ring of Fire”

The U.S. Geological Survey reported that the latest quake struck just west-southwest of Kumamoto-shi and about 8 miles south-southeast of Ueki, the epicenter of the late Thursday tremor that left nine dead.

“No question, this is a large and very important earthquake,” said Doug Given, a geophysicist with the USGS. “And it will do a lot of damage.”

Given noted: “The four islands of Japan are on the edge of what’s traditionally been known as the ‘Ring of Fire'” — a stretch along parts of the Pacific Ocean prone to volcanoes and earthquakes.

Victor Sardina, a geophysicist in Honolulu, Hawaii, told CNN that the latest quake was about 30 times more powerful than Thursday’s deadly tremor. He predicted “severe, serious implications in terms of damage and human losses.”

The shallow depth of the quake — about 10 kilometers, or 6 miles — and the densely populated area where it struck could prove to be devastating, according to experts.

The quake prompted the Japan Meteorological Agency to issue a tsunami advisory for coastal regions of Japan on the Ariake Sea and Yatsushiro Sea around 2 a.m. Saturday (1 p.m. ET Friday). The agency subsequently lifted all tsunami warnings and advisories.

Japanese media reported a small scale eruption of Mt. Aso around 8:30 a.m. local time Saturday. It was unclear whether the eruption occurred in relation to the earthquake, according to the Japan’s meteorological agency.

‘Buildings were swaying and cracking’

“This looks like it’s going to be a very damaging earthquake. I think we can expect that this is going to be far worse” than Thursday’s tremor, said Tom Jordan, director of the Southern California Earthquake Center.

In short video posted to Instagram, people standing in the parking lot of a 7-Eleven in Kumamoto let out screams following an aftershock. CNN