Rescuers race to save Japan typhoon victims
in Japan are “racing against time” to save dozens of people trapped by a typhoon bringing torrential rain that has killed more than 80 people.
Flash floods and landslides across central and western areas have sparked evacuation orders for more two million people.
Up to 54,000 soldiers and police are taking part in the search and rescue mission.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, meeting with a crisis committee responding to the disaster which has seen whole villages submerged, said: “Rescues, saving lives and evacuations are a race against time. There are still many people whose safety has yet to be confirmed.”
Pounded
The city of Kurashiki, with a population of nearly 500,000, has been hit hardest by the torrential rain that pounded western Japan with three times the usual amount for July.
Television footage showed patients and staff waiting for rescue on a balcony at Mabi Memorial Hospital.
Among the missing was a nineyear-old boy believed trapped in his house by a landslide.
“All I have is what I’m wearing,” a rescued woman clutching a toy poodle told a local TV station. “We had fled to the second floor but then the water rose more, so we went to the third.”
In Takehara, mudslides on Saturday crushed homes. In Okayama, brown water engulfed residential areas with people fleeing to rooftops and balconies, to signal rescue helicopters.
Water rose 16ft in the worst-hit areas where cars were floating.
Toshihide Takigawa, 35, a petrol station worker in Hiroshima, said: “My house was washed away. I was in a car and massive floods of water gushed towards me. I was just able to escape.”
Though the typhoon began last week, the worst of the rain hit from Thursday, when a builder was swept away.
The toll has risen steadily since then, and conditions have made rescue operations difficult, with some desperate citizens taking to Twitter to call for help.
“We’ve never had this kind of rain before,” a Japanese Meteorological Agency official said.
Emergency warnings for severe rain remain in effect for three prefectures with 11 inches predicted to fall by today on the island of Shikoku.