The Kumamoto earthquake that struck southwestern Japan has killed at least 18 people, and rescue crews spent Wednesday pulling apart a wrecked shopping mall and flattened houses in the hope of reaching anyone still alive beneath them.

The magnitude 7.1 quake hit the Kumamoto area of Kyushu, Japan’s southern main island, a day earlier. Prefectural officials counted at least 62 injured, six of them critically. That figure has climbed steadily since the shaking stopped, and nobody expects it to stay where it is.

Among the dead is one foreign national, the first confirmed in the disaster.

The Mall Where the Ground Gave Way

The worst of it happened at the Aeon Mall in the town of Kashima, which was packed with shoppers when the quake struck.

The company said roughly 3,000 customers were moved out to a parking lot. Then a gas explosion tore through a different section of the building, one where people were still working.

The second floor came down. Witnesses said the blast rattled the surrounding area nearly as hard as the earthquake itself had.

Four deaths at the mall have been confirmed. Three people remain unaccounted for, according to Aeon President Akio Yoshida, who appeared at a news conference in Kumamoto flanked by two other executives. All three bowed deeply. Yoshida said the company regards the explosion and the lives lost as a matter it takes with the utmost seriousness.

Television footage from the site showed a caved-in ceiling, twisted metal and debris strewn across the floor while rescue workers in helmets and masks picked through it.

Fumika Ono was inside a mall with her older sister when it began. The 19-year-old lost her balance and crouched down as the floor moved. Children started screaming around her and merchandise slid off the shelves. She got out safely, one of the many who did.

Memories of Ten Years Ago

For older residents, this was not a new experience.

Kiyoshi Matsunaga, 74, lives near the mall and was pushing a cart toward a checkout counter at a supermarket a few blocks away when the shaking began. Items came off the shelves around him. He found he could not move at all. He was frightened, he said plainly.

The quake brought back the disaster that struck Kumamoto a decade ago and killed 50 people. Japan sits atop some of the most active seismic territory on the planet, and residents of this prefecture have lived through the consequences more than once.

Centuries of History, Lost in Seconds

In the Nuyamazu district, a pair of gates at a Buddhist temple dating to the 16th century collapsed. They had been restored only five years ago.

Yuki Kiyozumi, the temple’s deputy chief priest, had just come home from a meeting and was about to feed her cat when the ground started moving. The shaking was violent enough that she had to crawl along the floor.

Standing among damaged ornaments and broken furniture, she said she has no idea whether the gates can be rebuilt, or how.

A Factory in Yatsushiro

In the nearby city of Yatsushiro, a chimney collapsed at a Nippon Paper Industries plant, killing five workers. Seven others were pulled alive from the wreckage.

The prefectural disaster team believes four people are still trapped there.

The foreign national confirmed dead was a Vietnamese technical intern, killed when a crane fell on him at the factory where he worked. According to the Vietnamese government, he had arrived in Japan only in January. Seven other Vietnamese interns at the same site got out safely.

A Vietnamese woman married to one of those workers was hurt when a wall came down and is being treated in hospital.

Life Without Power in the Heat

Nearly 34,900 households were still without electricity as of Wednesday. Around 15,000 had no running water.

More than 8,800 people have left their homes for over 400 shelters. Officials have been adding power sources at those sites specifically to run air conditioning, because the weather has been punishing.

That heat is its own emergency. It slows rescue crews working in protective gear, and it shortens the window for anyone still pinned under debris. Dehydration and heat exhaustion become serious threats within hours for trapped survivors, which is why urgency around the search has been so pronounced.

Aerial footage from police showed entire houses in residential neighborhoods reduced to flat piles. A few had slid into a nearby river.

Who Is Searching

Japan’s Self Defense Forces joined the operation alongside civilian rescue teams. Hundreds of trained personnel are involved, including a contingent of firefighters who traveled from Taiwan to assist.

Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi framed the situation bluntly. People are still waiting to be found, she said, and it is a race against time. The government, she added, will do everything possible to reach as many as it can.

Takaichi said food and other supplies are being prepared for delivery to the hardest-hit areas. She offered condolences to families of the dead and urged those affected to look after their health in the heat.

Transport Still Disrupted

Bullet train service across the region remains suspended.

Aso Kumamoto Airport reopened Wednesday, though several airlines canceled flights as a precaution rather than resume a normal schedule immediately.

What Comes Next

The immediate phase is measured in hours. Survivability under collapsed structures drops sharply after the first day, and with temperatures where they are, that window narrows further.

After that comes a longer reckoning. Thousands of people are displaced. Water and power networks need repair before anyone can return. A factory, a shopping center and an unknown number of homes will require assessment before they can be occupied again.

And in Nuyamazu, a priest is sweeping up around gates that stood for four centuries and were repaired only five years ago, wondering whether the money and the craftsmanship exist to raise them a third time.