TOKYO -- It was one of the biggest shopping meccas in the southern Japanese state of Kumamoto, reopened just last month in an area that has seen a recent semiconductor manufacturing boom. Some 4,500 people were in the mall on a hot summer Tuesday afternoon.
At 4:27 p.m., a powerful earthquake struck. It immediately brought back memories of a pair of quakes a decade ago in Kumamoto that killed more than 200 people and caused heavy damage at the mall.
Aeon, the Japanese retailer operating the mall, had boasted that the rebuilt structure was designed for resilience in quakes -- and sure enough, it withstood the violent shaking this time. All of the customers inside evacuated safely within half an hour.
Then, about 80 minutes later: Boom.
An explosion ripped through the mall, causing the second floor to collapse, blowing out windows and trapping a handful of mall workers who had stayed behind.
Rescue workers rushed to the scene and entered the building in the evening. Some of the workers escaped. But at least three people were killed and several others injured.
Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi said that overall, 13 people were killed in the quake. At a Nippon Paper factory, a chimney collapsed and killed at least five people. Many more people were injured.
Japan has strict building codes that generally mean most structures remain undamaged even in the most severe quakes. That is why some of the biggest challenges in preparing for quakes involve the secondary effects after the initial shaking is over.
Akio Yoshida, Aeon's president, said it was highly likely that the explosion was caused by a gas leak of some kind, although the details remain uncertain. He said the company had inspected the high-pressure valves three days before the mall reopened June 13.
"We could not have anticipated an explosion like this," Yoshida said at a news conference Wednesday. "In all our years of normal operations, we have never experienced an accident with gas supply."
He said the company's malls didn't experience gas leaks in the 2011 earthquake in northeastern Japan, which killed more than 20,000 people and led to a triple meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant mainly because of a tsunami that followed the quake.
Yoshida said the victims were all workers at tenants in the mall, and he wasn't sure why they were there.
"Generally speaking, once you evacuate, you don't go back," he said. "However, there must have been people who returned to the building for some reason, and it appears they were caught in the explosion."
The government's chief spokesman, Minoru Kihara, said the cause of the explosion was under investigation. He said when fire and police personnel searched the mall after the explosion, a gas odor filled the building.
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