About 30 people are reportedly dead or missing as of 6 p.m. on Friday after a massive 8.9-magnitude earthquake hit the northeast coast of Japan.

Japan’s public broadcaster NHK and other local media reported that a strong quake and a ten-meter tsunami rocked Tohoku, the northeastern region of Honshu Island, killing about 20 people and leaving ten others missing.

Five people were killed and dozens of others were buried in the rubble after a welfare facility collapsed in Fukushima prefecture. Iwate prefecture reported ten people were killed.

The number of casualties is likely to rise as many people went missing in a tsunami in Miyagi prefecture.

More than 50 fires have been reported in five areas in Tohoku.

Authorities are having difficulties assessing the exact extent of damage due to disrupted services of telecommunications and transportation in quake-hit regions.

The energy of Friday’s quake is 180 times that of the 7.3-magnitude Hanshin earthquake in Kobe city in 1996 that killed 64-hundred people.