Layers of ashen-brown mud cake the roadside, driftwood lies heaped in mangled mounds, and homes knocked down by landslides rest in eerie silence as the occasional truck roars past — scars left by torrential rain in September that battered the community of Machinomachi, a district in the northern corner of the city of Wajima.
Taking the wheel of his minivan, Tsukasa Kurosawa drives through the bleak scene, explaining the work he and his team of disaster relief experts and volunteers have been engaged in since the ferocious downpours flooded rivers and triggered mudslides — dealing yet another blow to residents still struggling to rebuild their lives after a violent earthquake rocked the region on Jan. 1, 2024.
A year after a magnitude 7.6 temblor resulted in a death toll that’s expected to surpass 500, reconstruction on the Noto Peninsula in Ishikawa Prefecture remains a prolonged and complex ordeal.
