Unprecedented rains kill 64 in Japan
Government dispatches 54,000 rescuers to deal with ‘situation of extreme danger’
TOKYO— The death toll from unprecedented rains in Japan rose to at least 64 with 44 missing on Sunday after rivers burst their banks and forced several million people from their homes. Torrential rains pounded some parts of western Japan with three times the usual precipitation for a normal July. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe dispatched some 54,000 rescuers across the country.
TOKYO— The death toll from unprecedented rains in Japan rose to at least 64 on Sunday after rivers burst their banks and forced several million people out of their homes.
“We’ve never experienced this kind of rain before,” an official at the Japanese Meteorological Agency (JMA) said. “This is a situation of extreme danger.”
3 times more rain
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.
At least 64 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 9year-old boy believed to be trapped in his house by a landslide 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 told NHKtelevision.
Division of rescuers
“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,” said Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
Emergency warnings for severe rain remained in effect for three prefectures, with 30 centimeters predicted to fall by Monday morning in parts of the smallest main island of Shikoku.
Evacuation orders remained in place for some 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.
‘Pouring down’
“My husband couldn’t make it home from work since the road was flooded, and since it was pouring down rain, I didn’t have enough courage to walk to an evacuation center with two infants after dark,” a woman wrote on Twitter without giving further details.
The rain began late last week as the remnants of a typhoon fed into a seasonal rainy front remaining in one place for an unusually long time, the JMAsaid.
Roads were closed and train services were suspended in parts of western Japan.
Shinkansen bullet train services resumed on a limited schedule after they were suspended on Friday.
Automakers including Mazda Motor Corp. and Daihatsu Diesel Manufacturing Co. suspended operations at several plants on Saturday.—