Torrential rain swamps wide area of Japan
TOKYO: The death toll from unprecedented rain in Japan rose to at least 66 yesterday after rivers burst their banks and forced several million people from their homes, media reports said.
More rain was expected to hit some areas for at least another day.
Torrential rains pounded some parts of western Japan with three times the usual precipitation for a normal July and set off landslips 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 (JMA) told a news conference. ‘‘This is a situation of extreme danger.’’
At least 66 people were killed and 44 missing, national broadcaster NHK said, after the death toll had been put at 49 overnight. Among the missing was a 9yearold boy believed trapped in his house by a landslip that killed at
least three others, one of them a man in his 80s.
‘‘All I have is what I’m wearing,’’ a rescued woman clutching a toy poodle said.
‘‘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 centre at the prime minister’s office and about 54,000 rescuers from the military, police and fire depart ments were dispatched across a wide swathe 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.
Emergency warnings for severe rain remained in effect for three prefectures, and 300mm was predicted to fall by today 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. Landslip warnings were issued in more than a quarter of the nation’s prefectures.
The rain came as the remnants of a typhoon fed into a seasonal rainy front. — Reuters