Cars queue to enter a gas station in the city of Uki in Kumamoto Prefecture on Thursday, two days after an earthquake with a magnitude of 7.1 struck the area. | REUTERS
Jul 30, 2026
As Tuesday’s magnitude 7.1 earthquake shook Kumamoto Prefecture, its foreign residents drew on lessons from the devastating 2016 quakes — checking on neighbors, translating warnings and rushing to secure emergency supplies.
Kirk Masden, a 67-year-old professor at Kumamoto Gakuen University in the city of Kumamoto who has distributed English-language information about life in the region to foreign residents for nearly three decades, described the shaking as “powerful” and “unusually prolonged.”
Although his own neighborhood was relatively unscathed, retaining electricity and water, Masden said that damage can vary dramatically over short distances. Shortly after the quake, Masden rode his bicycle to check on his wife and found a dislodged telephone line hanging low over a road near his home, backing up traffic, and briefly held it above passing vehicles before securing it over a roadside sign.
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