- 7 weeks ago
The terrifying power of sudden seismic events
New footage from Japan’s 7.1 earthquake has captured global attention because it shows, in stark detail, how quickly a routine moment can turn into a life-threatening emergency.
Japan is one of the most earthquake-prepared countries in the world, yet even there, the force of a major quake can be overwhelming and deeply unsettling.
The videos and images circulating after the event are terrifying not only because of the visible destruction, but because they remind viewers how unpredictable seismic hazards remain.
New footage from Japan’s 7.1 earthquake has captured global attention because it shows, in stark detail, how quickly a routine moment can turn into a life-threatening emergency.
Japan is one of the most earthquake-prepared countries in the world, yet even there, the force of a major quake can be overwhelming and deeply unsettling.
The videos and images circulating after the event are terrifying not only because of the visible destruction, but because they remind viewers how unpredictable seismic hazards remain.
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00As you can see behind me, the mall itself looks like it was blasted open.
00:05That is a shopping mall in southern Japan,
00:07torn wide open by the earthquake that threatened to rip Japan apart.
00:10But here is the part that makes this newly released footage so terrifying.
00:14The earthquake had already stopped, and the building had already been emptied.
00:18So why were people still trapped inside, and why did some of them never come out?
00:22It came at 4.27.
00:24It was an ordinary Tuesday afternoon in southern Japan.
00:27School was letting out. Offices were still busy.
00:30People were walking the aisles of a huge shopping mall, doing what they always did.
00:34And then, at 27 minutes past 4, the ground turned against them.
00:37Let's begin with developing news from Japan.
00:40There has been a major 7.1 magnitude earthquake.
00:44This was not a small tremor.
00:45This was one of the strongest earthquakes to hit the country in years.
00:48The Japan Meteorological Agency measured it at magnitude 7.1.
00:52Across the ocean, the United States Geological Survey put the number a little lower,
00:56at magnitude 6.8.
00:57The two agencies used different ways of measuring, so a small gap like that is normal.
01:01But make no mistake, whatever number you trust, this was a monster.
01:05It struck Kumamoto Prefecture on the island of Kyushu, and it struck it hard.
01:09A magnitude 7.1 tremor struck in Kumamoto Prefecture at 4.27 p.m.
01:15It recorded a 7.
01:16Pay close attention to that last part.
01:18A 7 on the scale.
01:19In Japan, they do not just measure how much energy an earthquake releases.
01:22They also measure how hard the ground actually shakes where people are standing.
01:26They call it the Shindo Scale, and it runs from 0 to 7.
01:297 is the top.
01:307 is the worst it gets.
01:31The towns of Uki City and Hikawa Town felt that full force, a Shindo 7.
01:35And this mattered because it was the first time any part of Japan had felt shaking that
01:40violent since the Nodo Peninsula earthquake back in 2024.
01:47Imagine that for a moment.
01:48The shaking was so strong that a grown adult could not even stand up straight.
01:52You could not run.
01:53You could not walk.
01:53If you wanted to move at all, you had to crawl on your hands and knees across a floor that
01:57was throwing you around like a toy.
01:58And there is a simple reason it felt so brutal.
02:00This earthquake was shallow, sitting only about 10 kilometers below the surface, right
02:04underneath where people live.
02:06When a quake is that close to the top, all of its power slams into the world above with
02:10almost nothing to soften it.
02:12We have the moment for you, captured on CCTV cameras, when the tremor initially struck.
02:18Cameras all over the region caught the exact second it began.
02:20Security cameras, doorbell cameras, phones, dash cams.
02:24In clip after clip you see the same thing.
02:26A normal room, a normal street.
02:27And then everything starts to shake at once.
02:29Shelves empty themselves onto the floor.
02:31Lights swing wildly.
02:32People freeze, then dive for cover.
02:34For the people living through it, there was no time to think.
02:36There was only time to react.
02:38I suddenly felt a big jolt while I was working at the desk.
02:42The tremor was so strong, I couldn't stand up.
02:45That was a worker at a nursing home for the elderly, describing how the jolt hit while
02:49she sat at her desk.
02:50She said the shaking was so powerful that residents and staff were thrown to the floor,
02:54and some of them were left injured and bleeding.
02:56These were older, fragile people, caught in the middle of a violent shake with no warning
03:00at all.
03:00And they were far from the only ones who got hurt in those first terrible seconds.
03:04I was at a cram school nearby on the seventh floor.
03:06The shaking was intense, and everybody quickly hid under their desks.
03:10That was a student at a cram school, seven floors up, when the building started to sway.
03:14All he and his classmates could do was hide under their desks and hope the building held.
03:18And while children were ducking for cover, the damage was spreading fast across the whole
03:22region.
03:23This was not just a scare.
03:24Real things were breaking.
03:25Real structures were coming apart.
03:27The public broadcaster saying at least 50 people have been taken to hospital.
03:3150 people rushed to a single hospital, and that was only the beginning of the count.
03:35The injured were pouring in from every direction.
03:37But the earthquake was not finished tearing up the map.
03:40The force of the earthquake has knocked this train carriage off its tracks.
03:45A freight train was thrown clean off its tracks.
03:47Reports confirmed it derailed and overturned near Yatsashiro Station.
03:51Bridges took heavy damage too.
03:52On the Kyushu Expressway, whole sections of road shifted and pulled apart at the joints.
03:57One bridge on another expressway moved more than a full meter out of place.
04:00At least a dozen homes across the prefecture simply collapsed, and the power went out for
04:05a huge chunk of the region.
04:06Around 48,000 households were left in the dark.
04:09There was one fear hanging over everything.
04:11The same fear that always hangs over Japan after a big quake.
04:14The nuclear plants.
04:15Memories of past disasters are never far away.
04:18But this time, the checks came back clean.
04:20Both the Genkai and Sendai nuclear stations reported no problems, with radiation levels holding
04:25steady.
04:25It was one of the few pieces of good news on a day that had very little of it.
04:29So by early evening, the shaking had stopped.
04:31The worst of the quake, people believed, was behind them.
04:33At that huge shopping mall in Kashima town, thousands of shoppers had already been walked
04:37outside and gathered in the parking lot, safe under the open sky.
04:40The danger had passed.
04:41Or so everyone thought.
04:42Because more than an hour after the ground went still, the most horrifying moment of
04:45this entire disaster was still waiting to happen.
04:48And it would happen in the one place everyone believed was already empty.
04:51The mall that should have been empty.
04:54To understand why this next part is so chilling, you have to understand what this mall was.
04:58This was Ian Mall Kumamoto, a giant shopping center in Kashima town.
05:02At the moment the earthquake hit, it was packed, with around 3,000 customers inside and well
05:06over 1,000 staff working across more than 200 shops.
05:09That is a small town's worth of people under one roof.
05:12And when the shaking started, the staff did exactly what they were trained to do.
05:15They moved fast, they guided the crowds toward the exits.
05:18By around 5 o'clock, only about 30 minutes after the quake, nearly all of the customers had
05:23been walked out to the safety of the parking area.
05:25Think about how well that worked.
05:26Thousands of people calmly emptied out of a shaking building and into the open air.
05:30It should have been the story of the day.
05:31A near miss.
05:32A disaster avoided.
05:33The building was damaged, yes, but the people were out.
05:35They were safe.
05:36And then, at 10 minutes to 6 in the evening, everything changed.
05:39The Fire and Disaster Management Agency says they've received information of an explosion
05:44at the Eon Mall Kumamoto in Kashima town.
05:48An explosion, not a collapse from the shaking.
05:50An actual explosion, tearing through the building more than an hour and 20 minutes after the main
05:55shock had ended.
05:55One moment the mall was a damaged but standing building that everyone had escaped.
05:59The next, it blew apart from the inside.
06:02According to witnesses, there was an explosion and smoke came out from the building.
06:06Witnesses on the ground could not believe what they were seeing.
06:08A blast.
06:09Smoke pouring out of a shopping mall.
06:11On the roads nearby, dashcam cameras were rolling and caught the exact moment of the explosion.
06:15The loud boom, the plume of grey smoke and debris being thrown into the air.
06:19It is that footage more than anything else that people call terrifying, because at first
06:22it makes no sense.
06:24The earthquake was over.
06:25Why is the mall exploding now?
06:26A taxi driver near the mall reported hearing a loud bang and the walls were blown away.
06:32A taxi driver parked near the mall heard the bang and watched the walls get blown outward.
06:36Pieces of that wall flew far enough to hit a nearby car.
06:39This was not a small pop.
06:41This was a powerful blast that ripped the skin right off the building.
06:44It says the second floor of the building has collapsed and many people could be trapped
06:48inside.
06:49The second floor, that is the detail that turns fear into dread, because while thousands of
06:54customers had been led to safety in the parking lot, not everyone had made it out.
06:57The blast collapsed sections of the second floor and blew out parts of the outer walls,
07:01and some of the people who worked there were still inside when it happened.
07:05We're also getting reports from Japan as well that the mall's second floor has absolutely
07:10collapsed.
07:11News channels around the world locked onto the same images.
07:13Aerial shots showing the exposed steel skeleton of the building.
07:17Walls simply gone.
07:18A modern shopping mall opened up like a broken box, and underneath all that talk of collapsed
07:22floors was a much darker question.
07:24How many people were still trapped in there?
07:26Four separate reports of people trapped under the rubble.
07:29Rescue teams rushed in against the clock, and through the night and into the next morning,
07:33they pulled eight people out of the rubble, but not everyone they reached could be saved.
07:37At first, at least two women in their 20s were confirmed dead.
07:40By the afternoon, the number of confirmed deaths at the mall had risen to three, and some later
07:44reports pushed the toll even higher.
07:46Here is the detail that breaks your heart.
07:47Every single one of the people killed or still missing was a worker, an employee from one of
07:51the shops, not a customer.
07:53The customers had been saved.
07:54The staff who helped save them were the ones who did not get out.
07:57So what caused a shopping mall to explode more than an hour after an earthquake?
08:01Investigators zeroed in on one answer.
08:02Gas.
08:03Ian's own president said a gas explosion was highly likely.
08:05The building used a large supply of LP gas for its restaurant kitchens and its air conditioning,
08:10fed through pipes from a big tank outside.
08:12The company believes the blast happened somewhere along that gas supply line, heading toward the
08:16restaurant area.
08:17The theory is grim but simple.
08:19The violent shaking may have damaged the pipes.
08:21Gas may have leaked and slowly built up in a hidden space.
08:24And then, all it needed was a single spark.
08:26There were warning signs too.
08:28Rescuers and officials searching the wreckage reported smelling gas inside the building.
08:32The mall had automatic shut-off valves that are supposed to cut the gas the instant an
08:36earthquake hits.
08:36The company said its equipment met all the safety standards and had been inspected just
08:40weeks earlier.
08:41And yet, somehow, the explosion still happened.
08:43But as terrible as that mall was, it was not the only place where the ground had claimed
08:47lives that day.
08:48A few towns over, at a completely different site, another structure had already come crashing
08:52down, and the danger was far from over.
08:55The Warnings They Can't Ignore
08:57While the world watched the mall, another tragedy was unfolding quietly a short distance.
09:02away, at a paper factory in the city of Yatsushiro.
09:05Here, a tall industrial chimney, a smokestack, snapped and came crashing down onto the plant
09:10buildings below.
09:11Company later shared the painful details.
09:13Eleven people had been trapped inside the plant when the chimney fell.
09:16Rescuers managed to reach seven of them.
09:17Five of those seven were confirmed dead and two were pulled out in moderate condition.
09:21The fate of the last four was still being checked.
09:23It was a brutal reminder that in an earthquake, it is not only old wooden houses that fail.
09:27Heavy industrial structures, the giant chimneys and towers we rarely think about,
09:31can turn into deadly hazards in seconds.
09:33And across the whole region, the rescue workers were fighting more than just rubble.
09:37They were fighting the weather.
09:38Temperatures have been well over 30 degrees in the Kumamoto region today, and the humidity
09:44is intense.
09:46Over 30 degrees Celsius, crushing humidity.
09:48Now imagine digging through concrete and twisted steel, searching for survivors in heat
09:53like that, hour after hour.
09:54You can't stand outside without breaking out in a sweat.
09:57That heat was not just uncomfortable.
10:00It was dangerous, both for the exhausted rescuers and for anyone still trapped and waiting
10:04to be found.
10:05And every hour that passed made the job harder.
10:07But the teams did not stop.
10:09Right now, the focus is finding those trapped inside.
10:12Finding the trapped, that was the one goal that mattered.
10:15Across the prefecture, thousands of people, somewhere around 9 to 10,000, crowded into hundreds
10:20of evacuation centers.
10:21They had homes they could not go back to or homes they were too afraid to sleep in.
10:25And they carried something heavier than fear.
10:27They carried memory.
10:28Because the people of Kumamoto had lived through this exact nightmare before.
10:32Just behind me is a shattered shell of what used to be a bustling shopping mall.
10:37For the people here, this mall was not just a store.
10:40It was woven into their daily lives.
10:42For this community, the mall was far more than a place to shop.
10:48One of those people was a 74-year-old man named Matsunaga Kiyoshi.
10:52He used to run stretching exercises for other seniors at that very mall.
10:56It was his gathering place, a spot full of memories.
10:58When the news came, he went to see the ruins with his own eyes.
11:01And what he felt was not just loss.
11:03It was a horrible sense of repeat.
11:05My first thought was, it's happened again.
11:07It was exactly the same as 10 years ago.
11:1010 years ago.
11:11That is the shadow hanging over every person in Kumamoto.
11:14In 2016, a series of earthquakes tore through this same region and killed more than 270 people.
11:20Matsunaga had rebuilt his life once already.
11:22He had cleaned up, put the books back on the shelves, and moved on.
11:26And now, he was standing in the wreckage all over again.
11:28And left everything in ruins again.
11:31Broke my heart.
11:32I never imagined something like that would happen again.
11:35You can hear the exhaustion in his voice.
11:37This is what makes disasters like this so cruel.
11:39It is not only the buildings that get broken.
11:41It is the sense that you are finally safe.
11:43And for many in this community, that sense had just been shattered for the second time in a decade.
11:47But here is the part that should make anyone watching sit up straight.
11:50The experts were saying this might not even be over yet.
11:53An official warned that more quakes of a similar intensity could follow over the next few days.
12:00Read that again.
12:01More quakes of a similar intensity.
12:03Not small aftershocks fading away into nothing.
12:06The real possibility of another huge one.
12:08For a week or so, especially the next couple of days,
12:11for earthquakes with maximum seismic intensities of seven.
12:15The authorities were telling people in plain language to brace for the chance of another
12:19Shindo 7, the very top of the scale, in the days right after.
12:22By the next day, more than 100 aftershocks had already been recorded and the ground had not
12:26settled.
12:27The reason for that fear goes back to the shallow depth and the fault buried beneath their feet.
12:31There could be even a bigger earthquake as we've seen in the same area in 2016.
12:36That comparison to 2016 is exactly why nobody in Kumamoto could relax.
12:41Back then, the first big quake was followed a couple of days later by an even stronger one
12:45that caused far worse damage.
12:47People were being warned that history could repeat itself yet again.
12:50And through all of it, the government moved to respond.
12:52I instructed relevant ministries and agencies to determine the extent of damage as soon as possible.
12:58That was Prime Minister Sani Takechi ordering an all-out emergency response.
13:03Her government confirmed at least 13 deaths in the disaster,
13:05with the true toll expected to climb as the rescues continued and the missing were found.
13:09Search teams, self-defense forces, and emergency crews poured into the region.
13:13But the people of Kumamoto were left doing what they have always done.
13:16Holding on, helping each other, and refusing to give up on the place they call home.
13:20But the repeated earthquakes and this relentless heat are testing everyone in Kumamoto.
13:27That is the real story behind this terrifying footage.
13:30Yes, the explosion at the mall is shocking.
13:32Yes, the shaking was violent and the collapse was sudden.
13:34But the deeper story is about a community that had just started to heal,
13:37hit again out of nowhere, forced to dig their neighbors out of the rubble in blistering heat,
13:41all while being warned that an even bigger quake could still be coming.
13:44The footage is frightening.
13:46What the people of Kumamoto are actually living through is far more frightening than any single
13:50clip.
13:50And as the aftershocks keep rolling in, the whole region is holding its breath,
13:54waiting to see if the worst is truly behind them, or still ahead.
13:57Click on one of the cards on your screen to see more videos like this.