Dozens still missing as shocked Japanese return to buried homes
● Death toll hits more than 100 ● At least 80 are unaccounted for
are searching for dozens of people still missing in south-western Japan after heavy rains left shocked residents returning to muddy homes unsure of where to start the recovery and cleanup due to the extent of damage from flooding and mudslides.
More than 100 people died or are presumed dead.
At least 80 are still unaccounted for, many of them in the hardest-hit Hiroshima area.
Seiji Toda was shocked and helpless when he saw his restaurant, which he opened nearly 40 years ago, filled with mud heaped about 1m from the floor and windows smashed.
Tables, laid with clean white tablecloths before he left, were all mud-covered and chairs were thrown to the floor. “I had never seen anything like this,” he said, standing outside his restaurant in Hiroshima city while wearing a helmet.
He said it would be impossible to clean up the mess by hand.
Right next to his restaurant were heaps of broken trees and other debris. Several cars were still half buried in the mud.
The assessment of casualties has been difficult because of the widespread area affected by the rainfall, flooding and landslides that has occurred since late last week.
Authorities warned landslides could strike even after rain subsides as the calamity shaped up to be potentially the worst in decades.
Some homes were smashed. Others were tilting precariously.
Rivers overflowed, turning towns into lakes and leaving dozens of people stranded on rooftops.
Military paddle boats and helicopters have brought people to the ground.
Thousands of homes were without clean water and elecrescuers tricity in Hiroshima and other hard-hit areas where many people lined up for water tanks under the scorching sun, with the temperature rising as high as 34C.
Chief cabinet secretary Yoshihide Suga said yesterday that 90 people were confirmed dead.
Prime minister Shinzo Abe cancelled his planned eightday trip to Europe and the Middle East to oversee the emergency response to deadly heavy rains.
Mr Abe earlier said the govothers ernment had expended the search and rescue effort, dispatching 73,000 troops and emergency workers. “The rescue teams are doing their utmost,” he said.
In large parts of Hiroshima, water streamed through a residential area, strewn with fallen telephone poles, uprooted trees and mud over the weekend.
Mr Toda said he took precautions because of his fresh memory of flooding four years ago that killed more than 70 in Hiroshima.
were caught off guard. “It gives me a chill thinking what could have happened,” resident Eiko Yamane said as she recalled realising how suddenly water was seeping through the tyres of the car she was driving. She was able to escape.
In another hard-hit city, Kurashiki, in neighbouring Okayama prefecture, a man lost his mother in a flooded house the day after speaking on the phone. “My mother lived alone in that house over there and we spoke on the phone the night before,” he told TBS television.
“I was hoping she managed to have escaped.”
Parts of southwestern Japan had as much as 10cm of rain an hour — the highest in decades, according to the Japan Meteorological Agency. By yesterday, rain warnings had been lifted.
In the Uwajima town in Ehime prefecture, an overflowing river washed debris down to the coast, turning seawater partially muddy.
A 64-year-old man and a nine-year-old boy were found dead underneath a mudslide.