{"id":249932,"date":"2025-03-02T08:42:13","date_gmt":"2025-03-02T08:42:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2025\/03\/02\/japan-fights-its-largest-wildfire-in-more-than-30-years\/"},"modified":"2025-03-02T08:42:13","modified_gmt":"2025-03-02T08:42:13","slug":"japan-fights-its-largest-wildfire-in-more-than-30-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2025\/03\/02\/japan-fights-its-largest-wildfire-in-more-than-30-years\/","title":{"rendered":"Japan Fights Its Largest Wildfire in More Than 30 Years"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"text-align:center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2025\/03\/03\/multimedia\/03xp-japan-fires-01-gktf\/03xp-japan-fires-01-gktf-facebookJumbo.jpg?ssl=1\" class=\"attachment-post-thumbnail size-post-thumbnail wp-post-image\" alt=\"Japan Fights Its Largest Wildfire in More Than 30 Years\" title=\"Japan Fights Its Largest Wildfire in More Than 30 Years\" \/><\/div><p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-0\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Japan\u2019s largest wildfire in more than three decades was burning through a forested area of a small coastal city on Sunday after killing at least one person, damaging dozens of homes and prompting evacuation orders for thousands of residents, fire officials said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The roughly 1,800-hectare (4,500-acre) fire has been burning for days in Ofunato, a city on the east coast of Japan\u2019s main island that is about 300 miles northeast of Tokyo. It had grown by 400 hectares since Saturday.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Japan\u2019s Fire and Disaster Management Agency said it had learned of the fire on Wednesday afternoon, and that at least 84 homes had been damaged by Wednesday night. Japanese media reports said that police found a man\u2019s body on the road Thursday morning while checking the area. The local authorities confirmed the man\u2019s death, but didn\u2019t give any other details. <\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The government issued evacuation orders to around 4,600 residents on Wednesday, according to the fire agency. Some<span class=\"css-8l6xbc evw5hdy0\">  <\/span>1,200 were in shelters as of Sunday morning.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-1\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Nearly 1,700 firefighters from 14 prefectures have been dispatched since Wednesday to fight the blaze, according to city officials. Video footage from <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=oAc70_H9ifA&amp;t=9s\" title=\"\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">NHK<\/a>, Japan\u2019s public broadcaster, showed firefighting aircraft circling above billowing smoke clouds rising over a forest, as orange flames raged between tree trunks.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">It was not immediately clear how much progress fire crews had made in containing the fire, or whether the fire had caused additional damage to structures since Wednesday. The fire agency could not be reached for comment.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The cause of the fire was under investigation, the agency said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The last forest fire of this scale in Japan burned more than 1,000 hectares on the northern island of Hokkaido in 1992, a fire agency spokesman said on Sunday, <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.japantimes.co.jp\/news\/2025\/03\/01\/japan\/iwate-wildfire-battle\/\" title=\"\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">the Japan Times reported<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Ofunato\u2019s driest season is typically from January to March, according to the <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.data.jma.go.jp\/stats\/etrn\/view\/monthly_s3_en.php?block_no=47512&amp;view=7\" title=\"\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">Japan Meteorological Agency<\/a>. Last month was the driest February there in over two decades.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-2\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Fire officials in Japan were also battling two smaller wildfires on Sunday. The first, in Yamanashi prefecture, west of Tokyo, began on Wednesday and grew to 120 hectares by Saturday, according to the fire agency. The second, in the northern prefecture of Nagano, started on Friday and reached 100 hectares by Sunday.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/03\/02\/world\/asia\/japan-fights-its-largest-wildfire-in-more-than-30-years.html\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Japan\u2019s largest wildfire in more than three decades was burning through a forested area of a small coastal city on Sunday after killing at least one person, damaging dozens of homes and prompting evacuation orders for thousands of residents, fire officials said. The roughly 1,800-hectare (4,500-acre) fire has been burning for days in Ofunato, a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":249933,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2025\/03\/03\/multimedia\/03xp-japan-fires-01-gktf\/03xp-japan-fires-01-gktf-facebookJumbo.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[9168,167650,92,3493,29259,5907,111],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249932"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=249932"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249932\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":249934,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249932\/revisions\/249934"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/249933"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=249932"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=249932"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=249932"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}