Japan’s largest fire in more than three decades has been burning through a forest area of a small coastal city on Sunday after killing at least one person, destroying dozens of houses and causing evacuation orders for thousands of residents, fire officials said.
The fire of about 1,800 hectares (4,500 acres) is burned for days in theunato, a city on the east coast of Japan’s main island which is about 300 miles northeast of Tokyo. It had increased to 400 hectares since Saturday.
The Japan Fire and Disaster Management Service said he had learned about the fire on Wednesday afternoon and that at least 84 houses had been damaged by Wednesday night. Japanese reports of the media reported that police had found a man’s body on a street on Thursday morning while controlling the area. Local authorities confirmed the death of man, but did not give any more details.
The government issued evacuation orders to about 4,600 residents on Wednesday, according to the Fire Department. About 1,200 were in shelters since Sunday morning.
About 1,700 firefighters from 14 prefectures have been sent on Wednesday to fight the fire, according to city officials. Videos from NHK, Japan’s public broadcaster, showed firefighting aircraft surrounding the clouds of tobacco rising over a forest, as orange flames dug between the tree trunks.
It was not immediately clear how much progress had made fire crews in the description of the fire or if the fire had caused additional damage to the structures on Wednesday. The fire agency could not be approached for comments.
The cause of the fire was under investigation, the organization said.
The latest forest fire of this scale in Japan burns more than 1,000 hectares on the northern island of Hawkido in 1992, a fire spokesman said on Sunday, Japan Times said.
The drier era of theunato is usually from January to March, according to Japan Meteorological Service. Last month he was the drier February there in over two decades.
Fire officials in Japan also fought two smaller fires on Sunday. The first, in the prefecture of Yamanashi, west of Tokyo, started on Wednesday and grew up in 120 hectares until Saturday, according to the Fire Department. The second, in the northern prefecture of Nagano, began on Friday and reached 100 hectares until Sunday.
