A huge fire was seen ripping through 170 buildings and killing at least one person in Japan’s southern coastal city on Wednesday.
The news comes with military and firefighter helicopters scrambling to extinguish the nation’s biggest urban blaze in nearly half a century. Shocking aerial footage from broadcasters showed houses reduced to mere rubble and massive plumes of smoke rising from the hilly Saganoseki district of Oita city.
This overlooks a fishing harbor known for its premium Seki-brand mackerel. The huge flames also spread to nearby forested areas and islands that were uninhabited more than 1km off the coast.
This was most likely due to strong winds, as shared by local media outlets. The fire began on Tuesday evening and ended up burning close to 48k square meters, which is roughly the size of seven large soccer fields, sources added. It also led to the evacuations of 175 residents in the district, some 770 km southwest of Tokyo, to flee the shelter.
One person was reportedly found dead, while another woman in her 50s was said to have suffered serious burn injuries on her skin, giving rise to emergency protocols in the hospital for treatment.
The incident has led to outages in nearly 300 hours, and these customers are currently deprived of power. The government is working around the clock to get it up and running as before.