Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Flooding in Japan
Death toll rises as heavy rain continues; millions urged to flee.
TOKYO — At least 85 people have died and 58 are unaccounted for as torrential rains continued to batter parts of western Japan on Sunday, causing landslides and flooding as millions of people were urged to flee their homes, local media reported.
Television footage showed bridges and cars washed away by raging rivers and floodwaters, with people perched on the roofs of their homes, surrounded by water and awaiting rescue. People have also taken to social media to plead for help.
“Rescue efforts are a battle with time,” Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told reporters Sunday morning. “The rescue teams are doing their utmost.”
Japan’s Meteorological Agency had issued rare “emergency warnings” against landslides, rising rivers, strong winds and lightning strikes caused by what it called “historic” rains — once or twice every 50 years — in 23 prefectures across the western and central parts of the country. The rains began Thursday and continued into Sunday in many areas.
The agency said three hours of rainfall in one area in Kochi prefecture reached an accumulated 10.4 inches, the highest since such records started in 1976.
The Japanese government set up an emergency office, designed for crises such as major earthquakes. Military paddle boats were being used to take people to dry land.
More than 1.6 million people were ordered to evacuate their homes, while 3.1 million were put on high alert and urged to do so. Nevertheless, the Kyodo news agency said, many had remained at home.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said 54,000 police officers, firefighters, and members of Japan’s Self-Defense Forces and coast guard had been mobilized in the rescue effort, Kyodo reported, with TV footage showing them using boats and helicopters to take people to safety.
Public broadcaster NHK said flooding and landslides were hindering rescue efforts and repeatedly urged people not to lose hope.
In Hiroshima prefecture, water streamed through a residential area, strewn with fallen telephone poles, uprooted trees and mud. Some homes were smashed.
Among the dead there was a 3-year-old girl whose home was hit by a landslide, Reuters reported.
“It’s very painful,” said one elderly man watching nearby. “I have a granddaughter the same age. If it were her, I wouldn’t be able to stop crying.”
In another area in Hiroshima, 12 people were reported missing when a residential area got sucked into a landslide, and one body was later found.
Two sisters from an elementary school with just six students on the small island of Nuwa in Ehime prefecture also died, according to Reuters. The younger girl, a first-grader, was a star and the hope of the depopulated island, the principal told NHK.
The western Hiroshima prefecture was hit the hardest by landslides, which claimed 37 lives, while 21 people died in Ehime, NHK reported.
In August 2014, 77 people died in Hiroshima when torrential rain triggered landslides, but one resident told Kyodo that the rains were heavier this time.
Auto manufacturers Mitsubishi and Mazda were forced to halt production at some factories because they could not get parts or did not want to force employees to travel to work in dangerous conditions, Kyodo reported.
Information for this article was contributed by Simon Denyer of The Washington Post and by Haruka Nuga and Yuri Kageyama of The Associated Press.