Workers Dig for Victims Buried in Japanese Quake

With the last fires finally out Thursday, workers dug through tons of dirt into a hotel believed to entomb more than 30 people--victims of an earthquake whose force brought down landslides and raised crashing seas.

At least 126 bodies had been recovered and 85 people were still missing from Monday’s quake, Japan’s deadliest in decades.

People crowded ferryboats resuming service to the hard-hit island of Okushiri to search for relatives or mourn the dead. Community centers and school gymnasiums were filled with homeless people sleeping on mats on the floors. Their few extra clothes hung on hangers along the wall.

Aftershocks, meanwhile, continued to rock northern Japan.

The initial 7.8 quake touched off giant waves, fires and landslides. Police said 151 people were injured and about 1,000 left homeless.

Rescuers delivered food and water to remote areas of Okushiri, a small island in the Sea of Japan where more than 100 people died. Some of the people whose homes were destroyed left the island on the ferryboats and planned to move in with friends or relatives elsewhere in Japan.

“I’ve had enough,” a grandmother said as she boarded a ferry.

Workers dug toward Okushiri’s Yoyoso Hotel, which was covered by a landslide touched off by the quake. The bodies of about three dozen people, many of them elderly tourists, were believed to be inside.

More landslides were feared after heavy rains Wednesday night.

Authorities had said that Monday’s quake, 50 miles off the coast of the northernmost main island of Hokkaido, was centered 30 miles under the Sea of Japan. On Thursday, they revised the estimate to 21 miles below the ocean floor.