Update from Japan after Thursday's 7.1-magnitude aftershock

Thursday night at 11:32 P.M. local time, Japan's northeastern coast was struck by a major 7.1 magnitude aftershock.

The team was all okay, but the shaking was intense. Several of our team members had to leave the hotel where they were staying in, due to the damage.

Today I spoke with the team, who are on the northeastern coast, and they gave this update:

The main effect of Thursday's 7.1 aftershock is that most of the area is still without electricity. As a result, on Friday most shops were closed or their stock was in short supply, so people lacked food and supplies, and evacuees in temporary shelters spent the day in darkness. No trains were running. These hardships, combined with the fears and anxieties triggered by the major aftershock and frequent smaller aftershocks, continue to make life difficult for survivors, as well as for responders.

The team visited several evacuation centers and still found them well organized and running relatively smoothly. Griff Samples and her team visited with kids in Kesennuma and Rikuzentakata to see how they were doing, and to continue working on the roll out of the Comfort for Kids program — which will offer kids the emotional and trauma support that they need more and more. A new school year is starting soon, so the team plans to focus on first training teachers and youth leaders in the program.

Malka Older — who is working on our economic recovery efforts — yesterday went to Oshima, an island in the bay of Kesennuma. They had just gotten electricity back the day before yesterday and then it went out again with the new earthquake. She reports that some people said yesterday's earthquake felt stronger than the tsunami earthquake, and she saw some minor additional damage (broken windows, etc) but as far as she could tell nothing major had gone down.

She also noted that in this 7.1 earthquake she saw damages that did not occur in the previous: cracks in buildings, garden walls that have fallen down. However, for the most part it doesn't seem like the earthquake caused any major damage to standing structures.