Wildfires at Otsuchi are contained after 11 days

Wildfires in Otsuchi, in Iwate Prefecture, Japan, were brought under control. They had burned for 11 days. About 1,600 hectares were burned. Officials described the fires as one of the country's largest in decades.

The fires broke out as two wildfires in Otsuchi. An evacuation order covered 1,880 residents as the blazes grew. Later, more than 1,000 firefighters were deployed and 3,000 people were evacuated from their homes. Japan then deployed 1,400 firefighters to the Otsuchi fires.

A hectare is a metric unit of area equal to 10,000 square meters. About 1,600 hectares is the area given for the burn. Eleven days is the duration from outbreak to control. Under control means firefighters stopped the spread, not that every pocket of smoke was gone the same hour. Iwate Prefecture is in the Tohoku region of northern Honshu.

While the Otsuchi fires were still burning, three other wildfires were spotted in Nagaoka and Uonuma, in Niigata Prefecture, and in Kitakata, in Fukushima Prefecture. Those are separate ignitions in other prefectures. The 1,600-hectare figure and the 11-day fight refer to Otsuchi. The report of containment does not fold the Niigata and Fukushima fires into that hectare count.

Large wildfires require rotations of crews, and the counts of firefighters changed as the response grew, from more than 1,000 to a deployment of 1,400. Evacuation numbers also moved, from an order covering 1,880 residents to 3,000 people evacuated. Those are successive official figures, not a single unchanged total. No death toll is included in the accounts of the Otsuchi fires.

The Otsuchi wildfires are under control after 11 days and about 1,600 hectares. They rank among Japan's largest fires in decades. Thousands of residents left and more than a thousand firefighters worked the lines. Containment was reported on May 2.