81 are killed by landslides as Japan hit by flooding
Rescue team TORRENTIAL rain and landslides have claimed at least 81 lives in Japan, with 58 still missing.
Families were buried alive after days of deluges hit western areas.
Evacuation orders were in place for two million people in what authorities warn could be the worst weather disaster to hit the country in decades.
Around 2,000 stranded people have so far been rescued from the hard-hit city of Kurashiki 90 miles east of Hiroshima.
And rescuers are in a “race against time” to save others threatened by floodwaters which have engulfed entire streets.
And 170 patients and staff had been evacuated yesterday, with up to 80 still stranded.
Shigeyuki Asano, 79 who spent a night without electricity or water, said: “I’m grateful to the rescuers.
“I feel so relieved I am now liberated from such a bad-smelling, dark place.”
The downfalls began last week as the remnants of a typhoon fed into a seasonal rainy front.