Over 1,200 disaster relief volunteers enter quake-hit Kumamoto

KUMAMOTO, Japan, Aug 10 (KYODO/APP):Over 1,200 disaster relief volunteers have entered quake-hit Kumamoto Prefecture since municipalities started accepting them this month.

Disaster volunteer centers have been set up in 11 municipalities in the southwestern Japan prefecture based on local requests, and 10 of them had begun dispatching volunteers by Saturday. These 10 local governments have received more applications than the number of volunteers they solicited.

The registered volunteers, totaling 1,293 by Friday, will engage in such work as removing debris and cleaning up houses damaged by the quake.

The prefectural government initially asked people wanting to work as volunteers to refrain from entering areas devastated by the magnitude-7.1 earthquake on July 28 until local governments were ready to accept them.

As of Saturday, the death toll stood at 39 and over 6,500 people remained in evacuation shelters, with some 18,000 houses destroyed or damaged, according to the Kumamoto government.

Risako Matsumoto, 58, who is using her vacation to come from the central Japan city of Iwata to help in Uki, one of the hardest-hit areas, said, “Because I often vacation here, I want to help.”