Discovery of five more bodies brings number feared dead in Mount Ontake eruption to 36, but rescuers forced to stop search

This article is more than 5 years old

This article is more than 5 years old

Five more bodies have been found near the peak of an erupting Japanese volcano, before rescuers were forced to suspend their search due to fears of toxic gas.

The grim discovery brings the number of people feared to have died in the Mount Ontake eruption to 36. The volcano erupted without warning during a busy hiking weekend.

A police spokesman told AFP the five bodies were in addition to 31 discovered on Sunday.

Hundreds of firefighters, police and troops remained at the peak on Monday, with helicopters flying overhead, despite the gases and steam billowing from the ruptured crater of the 3,067-metre (10,121ft) volcano.

A Japanese army official who took part in the search said rescuers had worn helmets, bullet-proof vests, goggles and masks to protect themselves from any fresh eruption.

“I saw rocks up to probably one metre across [that had been thrown through the air],” he said, adding the search had been difficult and involved digging through ash.

Heartbreaking stories have begun to emerge from survivors who made it down the mountain as rolling clouds of volcanic debris swept down its flanks, smothering everything in their path.

“Some people were buried in ash up to their knees and the two in front of me seemed to be dead,” one woman told the Asahi television network.

Another told how she had heard the last moments of a victim battered by a cascade of rocks. “There was someone lying outside the hut after being hit in the back,” she said. “He was saying ’It hurts, it hurts,’ but after about half an hour he went quiet.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A rescue helicopter searches for survivors at the mountain shrine at the ash-covered summit of Mount Ontake. Photograph: KIMIMASA MAYAMA/EPA

Seiichi Sakurai, who had been working at one of the huts around the top of the volcano, told public broadcaster NHK that he had tried his best to help people but could not save them all. “Ash was constantly falling … Some people were buried alive but I could do nothing but tell [rescuers] about them over the radio,” he said.

Another survivor told the Yomiuri newspaper he had seen a boy shouting “It’s hot” and “I can’t breathe!” near the peak, before the ash clouds brought blackness and silence.

On Monday morning, eight bodies were airlifted from the mountain. About 60 people suffered injuries in the disaster, the government has said, including people who were hit by flying rocks and inhaled hot or poisonous fumes.

For anguished families, the wait for news was taking its toll. A father sobbed as he clutched a photograph of his son and the young man’s girlfriend, who had not been heard from since the eruption.

An elderly woman told the Asahi network her son had phoned her just after gas, rocks and ash began spewing from the volcano. “He told me it erupted … He said ’It’s over. I’m dying now’ and then the line was cut off,” the woman said.

The meteorological agency forecast further eruptions, warning that volcanic debris may settle as far as 4km from the peak.

Japan’s meteorological agency keeps a round-the-clock watch on 47 volcanos thought to be at risk of violent activity over the next century, including Mount Fuji, whose eruption could have catastrophic effects.

But Toshitsugu Fujii, a volcanologist at the agency, admitted accurate forecasting was very difficult and steam explosions such as those on Ontake often occurred without warning.

“People may say we failed to predict this, but this is something that could not be helped, in a sense. That’s the reality of the limit of our knowledge,” he said on Sunday.