Painful rain
At least 81 die in flooded parts of western Japan
TOKYO — Unprecedented rains that have killed at least 81 people also stranded more than 2000 in the western Japanese city of Kurashiki on Sunday, with rescuers using helicopters and boats after rivers surged over their banks.
Torrential rains pounded some parts of western Japan with three times the usual precipitation for a normal July and set off landslides and sent rivers surging over their banks, trapping many people in their houses or on rooftops.
“We’ve never experienced this kind of rain before,” an official at the Japanese Meteorological Agency told a news conference. “This is a situation of extreme danger.”
The overall death toll from the rains in Japan rose to at least 81 on Sunday after floodwaters forced several million people from their homes, media reports and the Fire and Disaster Management Agency said.
Another 58 were missing, NHK said, and more rain was set to hit some areas for at least another day.
“All I have is what I’m wearing,” a rescued woman clutching a toy poodle told NHK.
“We had fled to the second floor but then the water rose more, so we went up to the third floor,” she said.
Japan’s government set up an emergency management center at the prime minister’s office and some 54,000 rescuers from the military, police and fire departments were dispatched across a wide swath of southwestern and western Japan.
“There are still many people missing and others in need of help, we are working against time,” Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said.
Homes washed away
Emergency warnings for severe rain remained in effect for three prefectures, with 300 mm predicted to fall by Monday morning in parts of the smallest main island of Shikoku.
Evacuation orders remained in place for about 2 million people and another 2.3 million were advised to evacuate, although rain had stopped and floodwaters receded in some areas. Landslide warnings were issued in more than a quarter of the nation’s prefectures.
Over 50,000 rescue workers, police and military personnel have been mobilized to respond to the disaster, which has left entire villages submerged by flooding, with just the top of traffic lights visible above the rising waters.
“I was in a car and massive floods of water gushed toward me from the front and back and then engulfed the road. I was just able to escape, but I was terrified,” 62-year-old Yuzo Hori told the Mainichi Shimbun daily in Hiroshima on Saturday.
Though the rains began last week when a typhoon made landfall, the worst downpours hit from Thursday, when a construction worker was swept away by floodwaters in western Japan.
The toll has risen steadily since then, and the conditions have made rescue operations difficult, with some desperate citizens taking to Twitter to call for help.
The floods have halted production at plants across the affected region, with reports of electricity, water and mobile phone network outages.
The disaster is the deadliest rain-related crisis in Japan since 2014, when at least 74 people were killed in landslides caused by torrential downpours in the Hiroshima region.