Japan city battered by quake -- again

KASHIWAZAKI (AFP) - The broken pieces of wood stuck out like needles from the debris of ruined houses. Shattered tiles lay scattered on the ground.

Rescue workers hunted for survivors, shifting through the remains of traditional Japanese wooden houses that had survived countless quakes and tremors in the past -- before Mother Nature finally caught up with them.

"This tremor was even harder than the 2004 earthquake," said Shoji Iida, looking out on the wreckage of Kashiwazaki, the small coastal city hardest hit by Monday's powerful earthquake.

"Many more houses were destroyed this time," he said. "I felt the shocks even before things started swinging."

It was the second time in just the last three years that a strong quake hit the city, packing hospitals with hundreds of wounded and tearing up roads like so many pieces of paper.

"I think all the old houses got crushed," said Susumu Ishiguro, an owner of a fishing shop.

One bridge was nearly snapped into two and roads were torn up, forcing residents to try their own makeshift repairs.

Iida said his morning commute usually took 12 minutes but today had taken an hour, even though Monday was a public holiday.

"The roads were all fractured and deformed with bumps all over the place. Local residents tried to help cars go ahead by laying iron sheets over the bumps, but there were still many places where automobiles were not able to drive through."

The scariest moment for the city's 100,000 residents came when billowing black smoke began pouring from Kashiwazaki's nuclear power plant -- one of the largest such sites in the world.

The smoke came from a fire that was raging within, and residents were lucky that the blaze was put out after a few hours and that there was never any danger, according to officials, of a radiation leak.

Already, hospitals in the region were struggling just to cope with the injuries caused by the quake alone.

"We are asking hospitals in other regions to send doctors as the doctors here alone cannot handle things," said Yoshiko Abe, a local hospital official.

In the October 2004 earthquake, whose focus was the nearby city of Omiya, 67 people were killed -- many of them elderly who suffered stress and fatigue after the initial tremor.

In an ominous sign after the latest quake, officials said all eight people confirmed dead were in their 70s or 80s.