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Agence France-Presse

When powerful - and shallow - twin earthquakes struck southern Japan barely 24 hours apart, the verdant hills that gracefully dominate the landscape turned into deadly cascades of mud.
Thousands of tonnes of soil and rock crashed through villages and across highways, severing transport links and crushing houses as people slept.
Watch: Drone footage shows damage of Japan twin quakes

At least 41 people died in the double disaster, many killed by falling debris as Saturday’s 7.0 magnitude quake finished off what a smaller tremor had started late Thursday.
Others suffocated when torrents of earth buried their homes.
From the air, the scale of the devastation becomes apparent; huge hillsides just gave way and great fissures opened up in the ground, swallowing roads, car parks and buildings.

Even where the mud did not reach, the fury of the quake wreaked ruin on the picturesque towns and villages of Kumamoto prefecture on Kyushu island, an area known for its natural beauty and dominated by Mount Aso, Japan’s largest active volcano.
Two historic tourist spots suffered - the 250-year-old main gate of Aso Shrine collapsed, as did a stone wall at Kumamoto castle, a stronghold that survived rebellions and attacks by warring samurai in centuries past.
Social networks offer comfort and confusion after Japan quakes
Traditional-style Japanese houses were the worst hit - their delicately-curved slate roofs smashed and their wooden frames splintered.
In Mashiki, homes that had been in families for generations were simply ripped apart by the violence the quake unleashed; their upper floors crashing down when cedar-wood support columns snapped.
For the residents who escaped, the damage to their property was low down their list of worries.

“I am so glad that we are alive now. That is all,” Kenji Shiroshita, 48, said after standing in line for rice and water at the town hall.
Shiroshita said Thursday’s initial 6.2 magnitude quake had been frightening in an area unused to the powerful tremors that rattle other parts of Japan.
But the rapid restoration of the power supply had lulled him into a false sense of security.
“I never expected the second one because the electricity was back on and there were cars on the roads. I was totally off guard,” he said.


Japan twin quakes turned hills into deadly cascades of mud

Rescue efforts have continued amid aftershocks and the escalating risk of landslides due to rainfall. Photo: Kyodo

(160417) -- KUMAMOTO, April 17, 2016 (Xinhua) -- Photo taken on April 17, 2016 shows a landslide after an earthquake in Minami-Aso, Kumamoto prefecture in southwest Japan, on April 17, 2016. A powerful magnitude-7.3 earthquake struck the island of Kyushu in southwest Japan early Saturday just a day after a sizable foreshock hit the region, with the number of fatalities now standing at 41 according to the latest figures on Sunday. (Xinhua/Liu Tian)

Soldiers and rescue workers search FOR survivors at a landslide site in the aftermath of two earthquakes in Minami-Aso, Kumamoto prefecture, on April 17, 2016. At least 41 people are known to have died in the double disaster, with up to eight still missing -- feared buried in shattered houses or under torrents of mud. / AFP PHOTO / JIJI PRESS / JIJI PRESS / Japan OUT

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