AT least 31 people have been found presumed dead near the peak of a Japanese volcano that erupted unexpectedly while it was packed with hikers out to admire autumn foliage, sending a huge cloud of ash and rock tumbling down its slopes.
Police said the 31 people were found in cardiopulmonary arrest but declined to confirm their deaths pending a formal examination, as per Japanese custom.
An official in the area said rescue efforts had been called off due to rising levels of toxic gas near the peak of Mount Ontake, as well as approaching nightfall.
Hundreds of people, including children, were stranded on the mountain, a popular hiking site, after it erupted without warning on Saturday, sending ash pouring down the slope for more than two miles.
Most made their way down later on Saturday but about 40 spent the night near the 10,062 feet peak. Some wrapped themselves in blankets and huddled in the basement of buildings.
More than 40 people were injured, several with broken bones.
The volcano was still erupting yesterday, pouring smoke and ash hundreds of feet into the sky. Ash was found on cars as far as 50 miles away.
Volcanoes erupt periodically in Japan, one of the world's most seismically active nations, but there have been no fatalities since 1991, when 43 people died in a pyroclastic flow, a superheated current of gas and rock, at Mount Unzen in southwestern Japan.
Ontake, Japan's second-highest volcano 125 miles west of Tokyo, last erupted seven years ago.
Its last major eruption was in 1979.
Satoshi Saito, a 52-year-old hiker who climbed Ontake on Saturday and descended less than an hour before the eruption, said the weather was good and the mountain, known for its autumn foliage, was crowded with people carrying cameras.
He said: "There were no earthquakes or strange smells on the mountain when I was there. But a man who runs a hotel near the mountain told me the number of small earthquakes had risen these past two months, and everyone thought it was weird."
Images online showed huge grey clouds boiling towards climbers at the peak and people scrambling to descend as blackness enveloped them.
Shuichi Mukai, who worked in a mountain lodge just below the peak, said: "All of a sudden ash piled up so quickly we couldn't even open the door. We were really packed in, maybe 150 people.
"There were some children crying, but most people were calm. We waited there in hard hats until they told us it was safe to come down."
Flights at Tokyo's Haneda airport suffered delays as planes changed routes to avoid the volcano, which straddles Nagano and Gifu prefectures.
But things were mostly back to normal by yesterday, an airport spokeswoman said. An official at the volcano division of the Japan Meteorological Agency said that, while there had been a rising number of small earthquakes detected at Ontake since September 10, the eruption could not have been predicted easily.
The official said: "There were no other signs of an imminent eruption, such as earth movements or changes on the mountain's surface.
"With only the earthquakes, we couldn't really say this would lead to an eruption." Japan lies on the Ring of Fire, a horseshoe-shaped band of fault lines and volcanoes circling the edges of the Pacific Ocean, and is home to 110 active volcanoes.
One of these, Sakurajima at the southern end of the western island of Kyushu, is 31 miles from Kyushu Electric Power's Sendai nuclear plant, which was approved to restart by Japan's nuclear regulator earlier in September.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article