Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe visited Hiroshima yesterday as rescuers expanded their search for 28 people missing in landslides on Wednesday last week that killed more than 50 people so far.
Rainshowers raised the risk of more slides, hampering the search effort and also triggering slides elsewhere in the mountainous and densely populated country. Japan’s Fire and Disaster Management Agency reported that two women died in another slide in northern Japan on Sunday.
The number of deaths from last week’s landslides in the western city of Hiroshima climbed to 52, as local officials revised the number of missing people to 28. Some in the earlier estimate of 38 were located in evacuation shelters, while others’ names were inadvertently duplicated.
Photo: Reuters
About 1,700 people were staying in shelters, as evacuation advisories remained in effect for areas where rain-soaked slopes remain unstable.
About 3,300 rescuers combed through a widened debris field with picks, shovels and chainsaws, as the search was extended for bodies that might have been swept further away as the slides rushed through.
Abe had postponed an inspection visit set for Sunday to avoid interfering with disaster relief operations, but met with evacuees and with a disaster task force yesterday in Hiroshima.
“We want to restore peoples’ safe, normal lives as soon as possible,” he said.
Abe cut his summer holiday short, but has drawn some criticism for briefly continuing a golf game after hearing of the disaster.
An average of 1,000 landslides a year occur in Japan, and the Japanese Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism says that about 520,000 slopes are at risk for such disasters.
Heavy rains continue to pose a threat in many areas, including Hiroshima, where rescue work is suspended occasionally due to fears of further collapses.
Authorities are considering setting up an early warning system for landslides, media outlet reports said yesterday. No evacuation warning was issued before the Hiroshima slides, though some survivors spoke of strange, dank smells that emerged before the hillsides collapsed.
However, for Japanese whose homes are located in or near deep ravines and mountains, many of them elderly people unable to dash to safety, the threats often are realized after it is too late.
The home that was crushed on Sunday in northern Japan’s Hokkaido, squeezed between a road and a steep hill, was destroyed in an instant. Only one of its three residents was rescued.
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