2024-01-02 21:25:00
2.01.2024 22:25
(Akt. 2.01.2024 22:30)
Passenger jet and Coast Guard plane collided ©APA/JIJI PRESS
A flaming inferno at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport following a plane collision with five deaths has overshadowed the deployment of relief workers in the earthquake zone on Japan’s west coast. A Japan Airlines (JAL) passenger plane collided on Tuesday immediately following landing with a Japanese Coast Guard plane that was carrying relief supplies to survivors of the earthquake disaster on the Noto Peninsula. Both machines caught fire.
While all 379 people on board the Airbus A350 passenger plane were able to leave the blazing plane without life-threatening injuries, any help came too late for five people on board the coast guard plane. Only the pilot of the Bombardier DHC8-300 survived, he suffered serious injuries.
The coast guard aircraft stationed in Haneda was on the runway when it collided with the JAL plane at around 5:50 p.m. (9:50 a.m. CET), Japanese media reported in the evening (local time). The images of the passenger plane burning in flames were broadcast live on Japanese television following devastating footage of the extensive destruction on the west coast of the island kingdom had been shown immediately before. At least 48 people were killed there.
At least 137 other people suffered injuries as a result of the particularly strong 7.6 magnitude quake on New Year’s Day, the Mainichi Shimbun reported. “The search and rescue of the people affected by the quake is a fight once morest time,” said Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in front of the crisis team. The national meteorological agency lifted a tsunami warning issued the previous day for Japan’s entire west coast on Tuesday.
In the evening, the Japanese television stations interrupted their previously non-stop earthquake coverage. The broadcaster TBS showed how the JAL plane coming from Hokkaido in northern Japan touched down on the runway and a huge fireball lit up the night. Everything started shaking and the lights went out. “It’s like a horror story,” Swede Anton Deibe told Swedish radio station SVT following the evacuation. When the accident occurred, the 17-year-old was sitting next to his sister behind the burning wing. There was panic on board.
A 33-year-old Japanese man told the Asahi Shimbun newspaper that orange flames were shooting out of the window while the cabin was filling with smoke. Like many other compatriots, he was on his way back from New Year’s celebrations with his in-laws in Hokkaido with his wife and two-year-old daughter. He thought “Oh no” and tried not to inhale the smoke. “Please stay calm. Please don’t take your luggage,” the on-board announcement said, the Japanese continued.
While firefighters extinguished the huge fire next to one of the destroyed engines and high flames shot up from the plane’s windows, the passengers left the plane via an emergency slide. There were eight small children among them. 17 aircraft occupants suffered injuries. Looking at the inferno, it seems like a miracle that they even survived. How exactly the collision with the coast guard plane came regarding was still unclear in the evening.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the archipelago on the Sea of Japan, many people began a second night in emergency shelters. Numerous houses were destroyed or fell victim to fires as a result of the ongoing earthquakes. Roads were torn up or partially blocked by landslides, and trees fell.
“I was very scared, I screamed. I thought I was going to die,” Australian tourist Kumudu Thuyakontha told The Sydney Morning Herald newspaper. She had just visited one of the traditional onsen baths in the tourist-popular Kanazawa Prefecture when the building began to shake. She and her family were uninjured and took the first available train to Kyoto following the shock subsided.
Others were less lucky. “At first I thought the quake was of normal strength,” an Ishikawa resident told the Asahi Shimbun newspaper. “But soon following, there was a vertical tremor and the house collapsed.” His 79-year-old mother, who was in another room, was almost buried under the house. They spent the night in a tent on a hill and then moved to emergency accommodation, the 50-year-old told the newspaper.
Around 100,000 people were asked to seek safety during the New Year celebrations. The power went out in tens of thousands of households due to winter temperatures. Japan’s Emperor Naruhito and his family canceled their traditional New Year’s appearance before the people on Tuesday. They were heartbroken and hoped that efforts to save lives would progress as quickly as possible, the media quoted the House of Commons as saying. The weather authority warned of further quakes in the next few days.
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