{"id":70743,"date":"2026-08-08T01:56:25","date_gmt":"2026-08-08T01:56:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/70743\/"},"modified":"2026-08-08T01:56:25","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T01:56:25","slug":"video-captures-chaos-as-earthquake-strikes-japan-hospital-mid-surgery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/70743\/","title":{"rendered":"Video Captures Chaos as Earthquake Strikes Japan Hospital Mid-Surgery"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"css-aa8b97-Paragraph-baseStyles-paragraphTreatmentStyles-print evys1bk0\">It was a routine day at Kumamoto General Hospital in Japan. Inside an operating room, doctors and nurses were perched over a patient, performing abdominal surgery. Then the shaking began.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-aa8b97-Paragraph-baseStyles-paragraphTreatmentStyles-print evys1bk0\">Tables, chairs and medical equipment went flying. Staff members were knocked to the ground. Two doctors clung onto the operating table, trying to protect the patient from the mayhem.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-aa8b97-Paragraph-baseStyles-paragraphTreatmentStyles-print evys1bk0\">The frantic early moments of a powerful 6.8-magnitude earthquake last week in Kumamoto, a prefecture in southern Japan, were captured by an operating-room camera. The hospital released the video this week.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-aa8b97-Paragraph-baseStyles-paragraphTreatmentStyles-print evys1bk0\">After the earthquake struck around 4:30 p.m. on July 28, it was \u201ctotal chaos,\u201d said Shotaro Yoshihara, a spokesman for the hospital.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-aa8b97-Paragraph-baseStyles-paragraphTreatmentStyles-print evys1bk0\">\u201cEveryone just had to step up and deal with the situation as best they could,\u201d he said in a telephone interview.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-aa8b97-Paragraph-baseStyles-paragraphTreatmentStyles-print evys1bk0\">At the time of the earthquake, there were four surgeries underway at the hospital. All were completed successfully once the shaking had subsided, Mr. Yoshihara said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-aa8b97-Paragraph-baseStyles-paragraphTreatmentStyles-print evys1bk0\">The earthquake killed 38 people and caused the collapse of several hundred buildings in Kumamoto, on Kyushu island, the southernmost of Japan\u2019s main islands. Yet the region <a class=\"css-bhdv0x-linkClass\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/08\/07\/world\/asia\/japan-earthquake-kumamoto-preparation.html\" title=\"\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">avoided large-scale damage<\/a> thanks to meticulous planning and tens of billions of dollars in earthquake proofing.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-aa8b97-Paragraph-baseStyles-paragraphTreatmentStyles-print evys1bk0\">In the aftermath of the earthquake, Kumamoto General Hospital faced disruptions to electricity and water, and an influx of injured residents.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-aa8b97-Paragraph-baseStyles-paragraphTreatmentStyles-print evys1bk0\">The hospital, which has 400 beds, was forced to suspend some services. But it had almost returned to full service by Wednesday.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-aa8b97-Paragraph-baseStyles-paragraphTreatmentStyles-print evys1bk0\">\u201cIt would be a devastating blow if a large-scale hospital like ours were unable to provide care,\u201d Mr. Yoshihara said. \u201cWe were all working with our full effort to get operations back up and running quickly.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It was a routine day at Kumamoto General Hospital in Japan. Inside an operating room, doctors and nurses&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":70744,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[7243,9327,45622,11352,8,17,42475,45623,45624,45621],"class_list":["post-70743","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-japan","tag-cameras","tag-doctors","tag-downloads-and-streaming","tag-hospitals","tag-japan","tag-japanese","tag-kumamoto-japan","tag-nursing-and-nurses","tag-surgery-and-surgeons","tag-video-recordings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70743","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=70743"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70743\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/70744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}