Two employees at a Habita general goods store in the earthquake-damaged Aeon Mall in Kumamoto, Japan, died in an explosion after being told by their employer to go back inside and secure cash from the tills. The incident has drawn scrutiny to workplace safety practices following natural disasters, with the company issuing a public apology and acknowledging that the instructions given to staff were "inappropriate."

The blast occurred roughly an hour after a magnitude 6.8 earthquake struck on 28 July, by which point most people had already evacuated the mall; the quake killed 38 people in total, seven of them at the Aeon Mall. One victim has been named as 22-year-old Kurumi Otake, who told a relative outside the mall she had to return inside because her employer had asked her to move cash from the register into a safe; company representatives later confirmed this account and apologised to her family at her wake. Habita's sales director, Goji Yuse, said the order "was not worth a life," while the retailer, founded in 1976 and operating more than ten stores, said it was reviewing how to proceed.