Japan digs through disaster
Relatives brace for news, emergency teams race to rescue survivors
KuManO ( Japan): Desperate relatives braced for bad news as rescuers dug through landslides in the wake of severe floods that have killed over 100 people and left swathes of central and western Japan under water.
With the toll mounting, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe cancelled a four-country foreign trip, local media said yesterday, and he was expected to visit affected areas later this week.
As the floods receded, emergency workers reached previously cut-off places where authorities fear they could find more bodies in the wreckage of homes devastated by rivers of mud and debris.
“I have asked my family to prepare for the worst,” said Kosuke Kiyohara, 38, as he waited for word of his sister and her two young sons.
“I can’t reach her phone.”
Rescue workers said it was still possible that survivors could be found, but acknowledged the odds were getting longer.
“It has been three days ... It’s possible that survivors will be found but as the days pass, the likelihood becomes slimmer,” a soldier at the scene said.
At the end of last week, rivers engorged by more than a metre of rain burst their banks, engulfing entire villages and forcing people to rooftops to await evacuation by helicopter.
Hillsides gave way under the weight of water, with deadly landslides crushing wooden houses and erasing roads.
The government said at least 100 people had been killed and with many people still missing, the tally was expected to rise further.
Government spokesman Yoshihide Suga said 73,000 police, firemen and troops were taking part in the rescue effort, with 700 helicopters deployed to help.
In Kumano, soldiers and other emergency workers were using diggers to clear crushed cars and mangled homes and chainsaws to cut up tree trunks.
But they were moving carefully, looking as they went for survivors or the remains of those killed in the disaster.
In one part of Kumano, the nose of a white car was just visible underneath the top floor of a home that had been torn from the rest of the building and swept down a hillside.
Water was still flowing from the surrounding hillsides around the feet of shell-shocked residents, some of whom wept as they saw their damaged district.
In neighbouring Okayama prefecture, rescue workers flew in helicopters over areas that are still submerged and otherwise unreachable, looking for signs of life.
“As far as we could see from the helicopter, no one is waving for help,” a rescue worker from Kurashiki city said.
Local government officials said pumping trucks were being deployed to help restore access to some of the worst-hit areas.