KUMAMOTO, Japan - More than 2,000 people remained in evacuation shelters Friday, a month after a powerful earthquake struck Kumamoto Prefecture, with extreme heat raising concern about disaster-related deaths and authorities rushing to help survivors rebuild their lives.
The Cabinet approved the same day the release of 147.8 billion yen ($927 million) in reserve funds from the fiscal 2026 budget to fund support measures for the quake-hit areas, including a travel subsidy across the country's southwestern main island of Kyushu where Kumamoto is located.
The prefecture's death toll from the magnitude-7.1 earthquake has reached 38, including a woman in her 70s who died of suspected heatstroke after spending a night in a car.
Some 2,460 people continued to take refuge at 61 evacuation centers as of Thursday, down from more than 10,000 at one point, while many others are still living in damaged homes, according to officials.
The July 28 quake damaged an estimated 42,222 homes. Authorities are rushing to issue certificates documenting damage for survivors to claim public assistance, and to build temporary housing.
Schools began reopening Friday in hard-hit Yatsushiro, where all 40 municipal elementary and junior high schools and other public schools started the new term, even as 15 of them are still being used as evacuation centers.
In Hikawa, which registered the maximum seismic intensity of 7 on Japan's scale, the start of classes at five public elementary and junior high schools has been postponed by a week to next Tuesday.
Recovery of basic services is also progressing. Water supplies were fully restored Friday in Uki, where more than 17,000 households had been without water at one point, leaving Hikawa as the only municipality in the prefecture still experiencing outages.
Kyushu Railway Co. said Thursday that it will fully resume bullet train services on the Kyushu Shinkansen Line on Sept. 18.
In the earthquakes that struck Kumamoto in 2016, disaster-related deaths accounted for about 80 percent of the prefecture's 275 fatalities, with many occurring within three months of the temblors.
