Water Outages to End by March 31 in Many Quake-Hit Areas

Kanazawa, Ishikawa Pref., Jan. 21 (Jiji Press)--Water outages continuing in some areas hit hard by the Jan. 1 Noto Peninsula earthquake will be mostly resolved by March 31, the Ishikawa prefectural government said Sunday.

Water supply is expected to be temporarily restored by that day in most areas in the six Ishikawa municipalities in which running water remains unavailable almost everywhere, according to projections presented at a prefectural disaster response meeting.

Provisional restoration work is expected to be completed between the end of February and the end of March in Wajima, Anamizu and Noto. 

In Shika, the work will mostly end within February, but there are some places where the work will not finish until the end of March.

Meanwhile, work will continue into April in parts of Suzu and Nanao, the projections showed.

As of Sunday, about 11,500 people were staying in evacuation shelters in the six municipalities. 

Water outages were affecting about 47,900 homes.

In disaster-stricken areas, concerns are mounting that more evacuees will die from causes not directly related to the quake, due to the deteriorating sanitary environment and the continuance of life under harsh conditions.

The prefectural government is transferring evacuees in makeshift shelters to secondary evacuation facilities such as hotels so that they can stay there until the infrastructure is restored.

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