One killed, 32 missing after quake paralyses Japan's Hokkaido island

TOKYO (Reuters) - At least one person was killed and 32 were missing, Japanese media reported, after a powerful earthquake paralysed the northern island of Hokkaido on Thursday, triggering landslides and knocking out power to its 5.3 million residents.

Aerial footage showed dozens of landslides exposing barren hillsides near the town of Atsuma in southern Hokkaido, with mounds of reddish earth and fallen trees piled up at the edge of green fields. The collapsed remains of what appeared to be houses or barns were scattered about.

Police officers and rescue workers search for survivors from a building damaged by a landslide caused by a powerful earthquake in Atsuma town in Japan's northern island of Hokkaido, Japan, in this photo taken by Kyodo September 6, 2018.

A fire broke out at a Mitsubishi Steel Mfg Co plant in the city of Muroran after the quake but was mostly extinguished with no injuries, a company official said. Japan is situated on the “Ring of Fire” arc of volcanoes and oceanic trenches that partly encircles the Pacific Basin and accounts for about 20 percent of the world’s earthquakes of magnitude 6 or greater.