DEATH TOLL IN JAPAN FLOOD REACHES 200 AMID HEAT, WATER SHORTAGE
KURASHIKI, JAPAN— Intense heat and water shortages raised fear of disease among survivors of last week’s floods and landslides as the death toll reached 200 with dozens more still missing.
Torrential rain in western Japan caused the country’s worst weather disaster in 36 years, in communities that have existed for decades on mountain slopes and flood plains.
But severe weather has been battering the country more regularly in recent years, raising questions about the impact of global warming.
More frequent disasters
“It’s an undeniable fact that this sort of disaster due to torrential, unprecedented rain is becoming more frequent in recent years,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said in Tokyo.
“We recognize that there’s a need to look into steps we can take to reduce the damage from disasters like this even a little bit,” he said.
More than 200,000 house- holds had no water a week after disaster struck and many thousands of people were homeless.
Hot and humid
With temperatures ranging from 31 to 34 degrees Celsius and high humidity, life in school gymnasiums and other evacuation centers began to take a toll.
Television footage showed one elderly woman trying to sleep by kneeling across a folding chair, arms over her eyes to keep out the light.
With few portable fans in evacuation centers, many survivors waved paper fans to keep cool.
Tight water supplies meant that people were not getting enough fluids, authorities said.
“Without water, we can’t really clean anything up. We can’t wash anything,” one man told NHK television.
The government has sent out water trucks but supplies remain limited.
In the hard-hit Mabi district of Kurashiki city in Okayama prefecture, piles of water-dam- aged refrigerators, washing machines and furniture lined the streets as residents used hoses to wash mud out of their homes.
Elderly more vulnerable
Unable to join in the strenuous work, Hisako Takeuchi, 73, and her husband, spent the past five nights at an elementary school that had been turned into a makeshift evacuation center.
“We only have each other and no relatives nearby. We aren’t able to move large things and we desperately need volunteer helpers,” said Takeuchi.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, on a visit to Kurashiki on Thursday, promised to provide help as soon as possible. He is set to visit two other hard-hit areas on Friday and the weekend.
Abe brushed aside criticism of the response during a trip to Okayama on Wednesday.
“We have done our best since the disaster happened,” local media quoted him as saying.
On Thursday, he pledged to ramp up help for affected areas and said the government had secured around 71,000 temporary homes for evacuees.
“Looking ahead, as we are expecting a massive amount of disaster-generated waste, I plan to send a team to each prefecture to support” cleanup efforts, Abe said.
$20M fund
The government has already said it will set aside around $20 million for the relief effort and Abe said there would be financial support for local governments to help with the reconstruction effort.
More than 70,000 military, police and firefighters toiled through the debris in a search for bodies.
Teams used diggers and chainsaws to clear landslides and cut away wreckage of buildings and trees.
Many areas were buried deep in mud that smelled like sewage and had hardened in the heat.
Japanese rescue workers searched the ruins of homes on Thursday looking for dozens of people still missing.
Still missing
But with around 60 people still feared missing, local authorities said they would continue searching house by house looking for survivors, or victims.
“The critical 72 hours have passed,” acknowledged Mutsunari Imawaka, an official with Okayama prefecture, one of the worst-hit regions.
“But we will continue our search believing there are still survivors,” he told AFP.
Television footage showed dozens of rescuers, including troops, removing rocks with diggers from houses buried in landslides.