Driving rain yesterday hampered the efforts of tens of thousands of rescue workers in southwestern Japan, as they searched for survivors from deadly floods and landslides, with more torrential downpours forecast.
About 50 people were feared dead after heavy rain lashed areas of western Japan beginning early on Saturday, causing rivers to burst their banks and flood low-lying regions.
Bad weather was preventing some rescue efforts, local officials said, with at least 13 people still unaccounted for.
Photo: Kyodo News via AP
“Because of the heavy rain, we were forced to cancel some emergency flights of helicopters over the disaster zone,” said Tsubasa Miyamoto, an official from the Kumamoto region.
Although the rain has eased from its peak, the floods washed away roads and bridges, leaving many in isolated communities cut off.
A local firefighter in the western region of Kagoshima said they had deployed boats to rescue 11 people, but conditions were making it hard to reach others stranded.
“Calls came from people telling us that they wanted to flee their home, but they could not do it on their own,” he said.
“Some roads are submerged and you cannot drive through them,” he added.
In one of the hardest-hit areas, residents wrote out the words “rice, water, SOS” on the ground, while others waved towels and called for rescue and relief goods.
At a nursing home for the elderly, 14 people were feared dead when water from a nearby river inundated the ground floor, leaving those in wheelchairs unable to reach higher ground.
Emergency services, aided by locals in rafts, managed to rescue about 50 staff and residents from the facility, bringing them to safety by boat.
Heavy rain is expected to continue through this afternoon and the Japan Meteorological Agency issued a non-compulsory evacuation order for about half a million people in southwestern Japan.
Up to 250mm of rain is expected in the 24-hour period through this morning in the southern part of Kyushu Island, which includes areas already hit hard by the flooding, the agency said.
“It’s such a mess,” resident Hirotoshi Nishi told public broadcaster NHK as he swept debris from his mud-strewn front room. “Many pieces of wood came into my house. I don’t know what to do.”
Hirokazu Kosaki, a 75-year-old bus driver in the town of Ashikita, told Jiji press: “It was nothing but water as far as I could see.”
Evacuation efforts are also being hampered by fears of spreading COVID-19, which has claimed almost 1,000 victims in Japan, with close to 20,000 cases.
Partitions have been set up at evacuation centers to keep distance between families, and evacuees are made to wash their hands frequently, sanitize and wear masks.
For some local business owners already battered by coronavirus, the natural disaster has compounded their problems.
Yuji Hashimoto, who runs a tourism bureau in the hot-spring resort in Yatsushiro, one of the flood-hit cities in Kumamoto, said that the “beautiful tourism spot dramatically changed overnight.”
“The damage was beyond our imagination. It’s literally a bolt from the blue... The disaster is a double-whammy as our hot spring resort was struggling to weather the impact of coronavirus. We don’t know what will happen to us next,” he said.
Government spokesman Yoshihide Suga told reporters that 19 people had been confirmed dead from the floods, while a further six were in a state of “cardio-respiratory arrest” — a term often used in Japan before a doctor officially certifies death.
Suga said officials were investigating another 24 deaths to confirm a direct link to the floods.
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