By Kentaro Okasaka and Tom Bateman<\/p>\n
OTSUCHI, Japan, April 27 (Reuters) – Ryota Haga was in high school when the biggest earthquake ever recorded in Japan triggered a deadly tsunami and swept \u200caway his family home in the quiet northeastern town of Otsuchi in March 2011.<\/p>\n
Now 31 \u200cwith a wife and toddler, the volunteer firefighter faces another natural disaster: this time a wildfire raging for a sixth day \u200band threatening his community after burning through more than 1,600 hectares of forest as of Monday morning.<\/p>\n
“It’s been 15 years since the (Great East Japan) Earthquake, and our lives were finally beginning to settle down,” Haga said at the end of another draining day battling the blaze on Sunday.<\/p>\n
“We can’t let people lose what is precious to \u200cthem all over again. The fire \u2060is spreading and our exhaustion is at a limit, but it’s our hometown. We will protect it at all costs, even if it feels like we’re running \u2060on empty.”<\/p>\n
Otsuchi was among the hardest-hit coastal towns in 2011, when a tsunami estimated around 10 metres (33 ft) high swept through the small fishing town. Nearly 1,300 residents, or about a tenth of its population, perished, including its \u200bmayor.<\/p>\n
The scale \u200bof the current fire is nothing that Haga has \u200bever experienced, he said. Some 1,400 firefighters and \u200cdozens of Self-Defense Force personnel have been deployed so far, with no prospects yet of bringing the blaze under control despite some scattered rain forecast on Monday.<\/p>\n
While Japan has experienced relatively few large-scale wildfires compared with other parts of the world, climate change has increased their frequency, especially as the early spring months before the humid rainy season have been hot, dry and with winds that can whip up flames. On \u200cSunday, another wildfire started in Fukushima, also in Japan’s northeastern \u200bregion.<\/p>\n
For Haga, the increasing instances of wildfires have added to \u200ba longer-term concern over the acute shortage \u200bof firefighters as the population declines and ages. Already, the fire brigade he belongs \u200cto is below the staffing level set by \u200bauthorities, he says.<\/p>\n
“If a \u200bforest fire breaks out when I’m in my 50s or 60s, and I’m the one gasping for breath while trying to fight it, I don’t think we’ll be able to stop it,” \u200bhe said.<\/p>\n
Still, Haga grasps onto the \u200chope that the firefighters’ single-minded determination to save the community will not be wasted.<\/p>\n
“The next \u200bgeneration might be inspired to join the volunteer fire brigade.”<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Kentaro Okasaka and Tom \u200bBateman, Writing by Chang-Ran Kim; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Kentaro Okasaka and Tom Bateman OTSUCHI, Japan, April 27 (Reuters) – Ryota Haga was in high school…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":12328,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[8,17,10391,9045],"class_list":{"0":"post-12327","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-japan","8":"tag-japan","9":"tag-japanese","10":"tag-ryota-haga","11":"tag-wildfire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12327","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12327"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12327\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12328"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12327"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12327"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12327"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}