Japanese authorities have warned that the country’s biggest wildfire will likely spread in decades after decades of damaged homes and forced more than 1,000 people to flee.
The fire continued to infuriate a week after it broke out in Ofunat city on the northeast coast, and it was expected that this year’s unusually dry winters and strong winds would be responsible.
As of Monday, the fire had spread over about 2,100 hectares of land, damaged 84 homes and forced 1,200 residents to evacuate to school gymnasiums and other shelters. Another 2,000 people are with friends and relatives.
Local governments believe the flames could be the cause of the death of a man whose bodies were found on a city road last weekend.
Over 2,000 Self-Defense Forces (SDF) troops and firefighters are struggling to control the flames spreading across forested mountainous regions, one of the communities destroyed by the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami.
“There is a great deal of power in fires,” city mayor Fujiwara Kiyoshi told reporters this week, according to the Asano Shinbun Newspaper. “We’re worried that it will expand even further.”
Prime Minister Isba has vowed to deploy a large number of firefighters and SDF personnel as needed to limit the damage. “It’s inevitable that the fire will spread to some extent, but we will take all possible steps to ensure that it doesn’t affect people’s homes,” he told MP.
However, relief is ongoing. The weather agency said snow should begin early on Wednesday and turn to rain from around noon.
Four days after the fire broke out, aerial footage from public broadcaster NHK showed flames and thick white smoke from the frames of the burnt-out buildings and other structures in the worst area of Ofunato, a city of about 40,000 people, located 500 km north of Tokyo.
According to the Fire and Disaster Management Agency, wildfires have been the largest in Japan since the late 1980s. Fires occurred this winter in other areas, including the Nagano Mountains, but they were under control, according to local media.
Since weather agencies began to maintain records in 1946, the northeastern Nihon region of Japan has experienced the driest winters.
According to the weather agency, Ofunato saw only 2.5mm of rainfall throughout February, compared to an average of 41mm for the same month last year.
“Weather conditions are dry, windy and steep terrain,” said Yoshiya Tuge, professor of water resources research at Kyoto University, during his time in Japan. “And many of them are coniferous and highly flammable. These factors contribute to the spread of fires at faster rates.”
According to government data, the number of wildfires in Japan has been declining since its peak in the 1970s. However, in 2023 there were around 1,300 people across the country, and the concentration was concentrated during the period when the air was drying out and the wind was blowing away from February to April.
