At least 370 visitors in tour groups from Hong Kong are at the popular destination, as landslides and power outages wreak havoc
Light fixtures swung and buildings swayed like thrill rides at an amusement park, according to terrified Hong Kong residents holidaying on the Japanese island prefecture of Hokkaido as a 6.7 magnitude earthquake hit on Thursday morning.
The quake has killed at least two people, injured more than 100 and cut power in several areas. Landslides have left dozens missing.
At least 13 tour groups comprising about 370 visitors from the city were at the popular destination at the time, according to the Travel Industry Council of Hong Kong. This does not include individual and business tourists.
“I was in bed in my hotel room and suddenly… the whole room began to shake,” said Amen Ng Man-yee, who was in Sapporo, the island’s capital about 68km north of the quake epicentre. Ng is employed by Hong Kong public broadcaster RTHK.
“But the scariest part of the ordeal wasn’t the shaking,” the tourist added. “It was the feeling that the entire hotel building was swaying from left to right.”
On an RTHK radio programme, another Hong Kong tourist in Sapporo said it felt like being in a “small amusement park ride”.
Jason Cheng, who was in Hokkaido and on the sixth day of an eight-day trip with his family, told the Post that Otaru, a northwestern port city where he was at the time of the quake, was not spared from tremors. The area is about 100km from the epicentre.
“It was 3am last night and I was asleep… The first thing that came to my mind was ‘why is there a train passing by my room?’,” he recalled. “Then my phone made a weird sound like a siren and kept repeating the word ‘earthquake’ in Japanese.
