Prime Minister Shinzo Abe ordered Japan’s military to mount a rescue operation as an undetermined number of people remain injured, trapped or overcome by smoke and ash from the nation’s second-highest volcano.
“There appear to be many injured,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said in a televised press conference at 6 p.m. local time. “The government is still confirming how many people are trapped on the mountain.” About 200 were descending and arriving in safe areas one by one, he added.
As many as several hundred climbers and trekkers may still be on the 3,067-meter Mt. Ontake in central Japan, according to reports by public broadcaster NHK and private media including the Nikkei and Asahi newspapers.
Some 200 were sheltering at a lodge near the summit of the volcano after the eruption, the first in seven years, NHK said earlier today, citing telephone contact with those at the lodge. Conditions were too dangerous for anyone to leave the lodge to try to assist people who could be seen collapsed along trails on the mountain, according to that report.
The volcano continued to spew smoke and ash throughout daylight hours after the eruption began shortly before noon, according to the Japan Meteorological Agency, which issued a warning against approaching the area.
More than 250 people remained trapped on the mountain’s slopes as of 2:20 p.m., said a Nagano prefecture police spokesman, who declined to be named citing department policy. There was information that four people were buried in ash, he said.
Volcanic Japan
Japan lies on the so-called “Ring of Fire,” an arc of volcanoes and fault lines surrounding the Pacific Basin, and sits at the meeting point of three tectonic plates, the North American, Eurasian and Philippine Sea plates.
Mt. Ontake, which straddles Nagano and Gifu prefectures, most recently erupted in March 2007, according to the weather agency, which warned on its website of volcanic ash falls in Gifu, Nagano and Yamanashi prefectures.
Ontake is one of more than 100 active volcanoes in Japan, according to the website www.volcanodiscovery.com, which dates the mountain’s first recorded eruption to 1979. Ash from that eruption fell as far as 150 kilometers (93 miles) away, the website notes.
First Published September 27, 2014, 12:14 p.m.
