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The Yomiuri Shimbun Firefighters gather at a branch office of the Imabari city government in Ehime Prefecture on Wednesday morning.
The Yomiuri Shimbun
15:47 JST, March 26, 2025
The wildfires in Imabari, Ehime Prefecture, and Okayama City continued to spread on Wednesday morning, while another wildfire broke out in Miyazaki City on Tuesday and still has not been extinguished.
By Wednesday, 298 emergency firefighters from six prefectures, including Nagano and Shiga, arrived in Imabari and were fighting the fires.
In Imabari, firefighters from Hiroshima and Kagawa prefectures worked to prevent the fire from spreading to homes at the foot of the mountains, and helicopters from Yamaguchi and other prefectures dropped water onto the fire.
“We hope to protect people’s lives and their properties,” said a firefighter from Kagawa Prefecture working in Imabari’s Nonose district, where a new evacuation order was issued earlier on Wednesday.
According to the Ehime prefectural government, 306 hectares had burned in Imabari as of 11:30 p.m. on Tuesday. Evacuation orders had been issued to 7,494 people from 3,848 households, including those from the neighboring city of Saijo, as of 8 a.m. on Wednesday. A total 340 people from 242 households have evacuated.
The Yomiuri Shimbun A helicopter drops water on a wildfire in Miyazaki City on Wednesday morning.
The Okayama City wildfire had burned about 423 hectares, including a part of neighboring Tamano. The fire burned an additional 112 hectares since Tuesday afternoon.
Firefighters have been battling the fire 24 hours a day, and 11 helicopters from the Self-Defense Forces and neighboring municipalities resumed dropping water on Wednesday morning.
In Miyazaki City, the city government has reported no injuries or damage to houses due to a wildfire that broke out in the Kagamizu district on Tuesday, but the fire had burned about 50 hectares as of 7 a.m. on Wednesday. Helicopters resumed fighting the fire early on Wednesday morning.
