Noto quake victims’ family sues government and building owner over fatal collapse

A man whose wife and daughter were killed when a building collapsed in the 2024 Noto Peninsula earthquake filed a lawsuit against the government and the building’s owner on Thursday, seeking about ¥215 million ($1.36 million) in damages.

Kenji Kusunoki, who had at the time operated an izakaya restaurant next to the building in Wajima, Ishikawa Prefecture, filed the suit with the Tokyo District Court.

The 58-year-old man alleges that the collapse was caused in part by the government’s failure to provide adequate guidance and supervision to local authorities.

The seven-story reinforced concrete building, completed in 1975, toppled sideways from its base after being hit by a magnitude 7 earthquake on Jan. 1, 2024. It crushed Kusunoki’s home and restaurant next door, killing his wife, Yukari Kusunoki (then 48), and his eldest daughter, Jura Kusunoki (then 19).

In the lawsuit, Kusunoki’s side argues that the government prioritized the cost of retrofitting buildings and limited mandatory seismic inspections to large buildings.

The collapsed structure was not covered by the requirement, nor were inspections of the strength of the piles supporting the building mandatory.

Kenji Kusunoki during a news conference in Tokyo's Chiyoda Ward on Thursday | JIJI

He argues that if the government had properly instructed local authorities, they could have ordered the building to be reinforced or its use suspended.

Regarding the responsibility of Goshimaya, the Wajima-based company that owns the building, the lawsuit contends that the building clearly lacked basic safety features that should normally be in place, noting that there were no reinforcing steel bars connecting the piles to the foundation.

A panel of experts commissioned by the Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism Ministry released its final report in December last year, concluding that several factors contributed to the collapse. These included an uneven arrangement of columns that concentrated the load on certain piles, soft ground and weak piles built before current safety standards were introduced.

It was the first known case in Japan of a building collapsing due to damage to its foundation piles.

The government and Goshimaya declined to comment on the lawsuit.

After filing the lawsuit, Kusunoki said that he could not help thinking that his wife and daughter would still be alive if the neighboring building had not collapsed, and urged the defendants to “understand the gravity of what happened.”

Kusunoki, who rebuilt the izakaya he had run with his wife in Wajima in Kawasaki, Kanagawa Prefecture, said, “I have to live with the burden of not having been able to save them.”