JAPAN REELING FROM TYPHOON
AT LEAST 58 KILLED BY WIDESPREAD FLOODING
Rescue workers waded through muddy, waisthigh waters on Monday searching for missing people after one of the worst typhoons to hit Japan in recent history, while rain fell again in some affected areas, stoking fears of further flooding.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said vast areas had been struck by the storm and called for urgent support to the affected.
The storm has killed at least 58, according to the Japanese public broadcaster NHK. The typhoon left vast sections of towns in central and eastern Japan under water, with another 16 missing and 202 injured, NHK said.
Tens of thousands of rescue workers and a fleet of helicopters have fanned out in the affected areas, officials said.
“There still are many residents who have yet to be accounted for. Our people in uniform are working day and night in search and rescue operations,” Abe told an emergency meeting of ministers.
“Damage has been made in an extremely wide range of areas, and more than 30,000 people are still being forced to remain in the state of evacuation. It is our urgent task to offer meticulous support to those who have been affected.”
Typhoon Hagibis, which means “speed” in the Philippine language Tagalog, made landfall on Japan’s main island of Honshu on Saturday and headed out to sea early on Sunday.
Groups of rescuers wearing goggles and snorkels searched for survivors while making their way in waist-high water in Nagano, central Japan, where the Chikuma River inundated swaths of land.
A middle-aged man in Nagano, asked about the situation around his house, told NHK: “It’s just like a lake.”
Yoshinobu Tsuchiya, 69, returned on Monday morning to his home in Nagano City, near where the Chikuma Rover had breached its banks, to find that his first floor had been flooded and that the garden he tended had turned to brown mud.
“So this is what it’s come to,” Tsuchiya sighed to the Nikkei newspaper. “I can’t even imagine when we’ll finish cleaning up. I’m sick of this flood.”
A neighbour in his 60s told the newspaper, “This is just like a tsunami. This is hopeless.”
More than 110,000 police officers, fire fighters, soldiers and coast guard personnel, as well as some 100 helicopters were mobilized for Monday’s rescue operations, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said.
Later in the day, strong rain is forecast in some parts of central and eastern Japan, where soil is already loosened by record-breaking rain from the typhoon, prompting Suga to urge residents to keep their guard up.
“Rain is expected in affected areas today. Because of the rain we have seen so far, levels of water are high in some rivers and soil is loose in some areas,” Suga said.
“Please remain on your guard for landslides and river overflows.”
The Rugby World Cup was among several high-profile events whose schedule was impacted by the arrival of the storm, with a number of games cancelled.
Canada’s rugby players opted to stay and help with recovery efforts in Kamaishi, a town in north-east Japan, where their match was among those cancelled.
Around 15 players and officials filled sandbags with mud gathered from driveways and cleaned out a house that had been flooded in the town, which was also badly hit by the 2011 earthquake and tsunami disaster.
In Tokyo, Saskatchewan’s premier was among those sheltering in place on Saturday as the typhoon battered the city.
Scott Moe, who is on a trade mission in Asia, said some of the official delegation travelled to South Korea ahead of schedule in anticipation of the typhoon.
Moe said Saturday he and the rest of the delegation in Tokyo were safe and in consistent communication with the Canadian Embassy in case the storm worsens.
One reason why the storm caused such severe impacts is that the inner core of the typhoon, with its heaviest rains and highest winds, remained intact as it swept across Tokyo and dumped heavy rains across northeastern Japan as well. According to reporting from The Washington Post’s Simon Denyer, by Sunday, more than 20 rivers in central and northeastern Japan had burst their banks, flooding more than 1,000 homes in cities, towns and villages.
Numerous levees failed, and at one point, the government advised nearly 8 million people to evacuate, Denyer reported.
Severe flooding occurred in Nagano, the site of the 1998 Winter Olympics, where waters from the overflowing Chikuma River damaged a fleet of high-speed bullet trains that had been parked in a maintenance rail depot.
A Nagano city official said there were some showers by early afternoon, although it was not heavy rain.
More than 77,000 households were still without power by mid-afternoon on Monday, a national holiday, the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry said.
That was down from 262,000 households as of midday on Sunday.
Also, about 136,000 households were without running water as of Monday morning, Suga said.
In Fukushima, north of the capital, Tokyo Electric Power Co. reported nine cases of irregular readings from sensors monitoring water over the weekend at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, which was crippled by a 2011 earthquake and tsunami.
But a Tokyo Electric official said on Monday eight of them were triggered by rainwater, and the other one was caused by malfunction of a monitor, and that there was no leakage of contaminated water.
THERE STILL ARE MANY RESIDENTS WHO HAVE YET TO BE ACCOUNTED FOR.