The death toll from the 6.7-magnitude earthquake that shook Japan's northern Hokkaido island on Thursday rose to 16, the Japanese prime minister confirmed on Friday, while over 40 percent of the power supply on the island is now restored. “It’s unbelievable.”

The site of a landslide triggered by Thursday’s earthquake in Atsuma town, Hokkaido (Eugene Hoshiko/AP)

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said nearly half of the nearly three million households on the island had their power restored after a day of island-wide blackouts. TOKYO, Sept 7 (Reuters) - After an earthquake knocked out power to 5.3 million people this week, Hokkaido Electric expects to restore service to most of them by the end of Friday, but experts say the island-wide outage highlights fundamental flaws in Japan's power grid. I thought my house would collapse.”

Around 1.6 million households in the sparsely populated northern island of Hokkaido were still without power after the quake damaged a thermal plant supplying electricity to the region.
The death toll from the earthquake in Hokkaido, Japan, rises to 39. More people remain missing.