An expert has found a connection between the earthquake that hit the Noto Peninsula on New Year's Day and a mudslide that occurred on Saturday in Wajima City there.

Part of a mountain behind houses collapsed, knocking them down.

Takebayashi Hiroshi of Kyoto University's Disaster Prevention Research Institute analyzed the mechanism of the mudslide from rain data and images taken before and after the cloudburst.

He said: "If the sediment that collapsed due to the earthquake had accumulated in the ravine, it could drift and flow with even a small amount of rainfall. So people need to evacuate a little earlier."

Takebayashi also ran a simulation of the sediment movement. It shows the mud flowing at 7 meters per second.

That is not particularly fast, but because the houses were nearby it took just 33 seconds for the sludge to reach them. Takebayashi says there are other similar places in quake-hit areas on the Noto Peninsula.