Some residents sleep in cars after 2 nights of quakes kill 41 in Japan

Associated Press

OZU, JAPAN

The wooden home barely withstood the first earthquake. An even stronger one the next night dealt what might have been the final blow – if not to the house, then to the Tanaka family’s peace of mind.

The Tanakas joined about 50 other residents of the southern Japanese town of Ozu who were planning to sleep in their cars at a public park Saturday after two nights of increasingly terrifying earthquakes that have killed 41 people and injured about 1,500, flattened houses and triggered major landslides.

“I don’t think we can go back there. Our life is in limbo,” said 62-year-old Yoshiaki Tanaka, as other evacuees served rice balls for dinner.

He, his wife and his 85-year-old mother fled their home after a magnitude-7.3 earthquake struck Saturday at 1:25 a.m., just 28 hours after a magnitude-6.5 quake hit the same area.

Army troops and other rescuers, using military helicopters to reach some stranded at a mountain resort, rushed Saturday to reach trapped residents in hard-hit communities near Kumamoto, a city of 740,000 on the southwestern island of Kyushu.

Heavy rain started falling Saturday night, threatening to complicate the relief operation and set off more mudslides.