Extreme Heat Claims a Life Among Survivors of Japan's Kumamoto Earthquake

A woman in her 70s died of suspected heatstroke while sheltering in her car in Kumamoto prefecture, officials said Sunday, the latest death attributed to the powerful earthquake that struck southwestern Japan last week. Authorities classified it as a disaster-related death, meaning the earthquake created the circumstances that led to it.

Survivors are contending with extreme heat over the first weekend since the quake, and officials are warning of the danger to people displaced from their homes and living in cars or temporary shelters. The combination of an earthquake and a heatwave places additional strain on an aging population and on the emergency systems responding to both.

The episode illustrates how overlapping disasters increase their combined human cost. An earthquake that damages housing forces people into conditions that a following heatwave makes deadly, and the second hazard extends the toll of the first well after the earthquake itself.