Foreign residents struggled to get disaster updates after Kumamoto's magnitude-7.1 quake

In the wake of the July 28 magnitude-7.1 earthquake that struck Kumamoto Prefecture, one outlet's tally revealed that only three of the 19 municipalities surveyed had established disaster-information channels for foreign residents. The quake, which reached level 7 on Japan's seismic intensity scale in Uki and Hikawa and resulted in 38 fatalities, exposed a gap in communication for the roughly 31,000 foreign nationals living in the region.

Kumamoto City responded by creating an emergency email service and a shelter at its International Center, issuing damage certificates to about 680 registered users. The town of Kikuyo, home to a Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. plant, opened a social-media feed in plain Japanese, while Yatsushiro launched a webpage and Line messaging alerts for evacuation details. Despite these efforts, Uki and Hikawa have not yet set up foreign-focused information services, and language barriers still impede the delivery of supplies, as illustrated by a Vietnamese resident who had to share limited provisions with compatriots. Officials acknowledge the difficulty of reaching all affected foreigners with timely assistance.