On Sunday, Japan prepared for further rain as rescuers sorted through flood and landslide devastation caused by record rains that killed at least three people.
Residents returned to check on their mud-strewn homes in the southwest, where almost two million people were told to take refuge when rivers flooded on Saturday. An elderly resident of Kanzaki in Saga prefecture told public station NHK that “so many logs plummeted down and shattered into our area” from adjacent mountains.
“It was terrifying,” she said. “When it rains, you must go immediately.”
Since Wednesday, more than a metre (three feet) of rain has fallen in the northern portion of Kyushu, one of the areas hardest impacted by a belt of severe rain that has swept across Japan.
On Sunday, the region’s showers had subsided, and the meteorological service had downgraded its advisories from the highest level, although additional rain was forecast for the evening.
“We haven’t started a full-scale survey of human or property damage,” Hironori Fujiki, a city official in Kyushu’s Nagasaki prefecture, said.
“We haven’t seen the full scope of the calamity yet,” he told AFP.
Fujiki said two ladies in their 70s were confirmed deceased after being discovered in a drainage ditch.
It occurred after a 59-year-old lady perished in a landslide in Unzen, Nagasaki, that swept away her home on Friday. Rescuers are still searching the wreckage for two of her relatives.
Images from Saga showed helicopters winching residents to safety from homes engulfed in muddy water. Landslides were also reported in other parts of Japan, with three people, including a kid under the age of ten, believed dead when a family house in central Nagano was swamped, according to a local official who spoke to AFP on Sunday.
Climate change, according to scientists, is increasing the chance of heavy rain in Japan and other parts of the world because a warmer atmosphere contains more water.
Last month, heavy rains triggered a deadly landslide in the central resort town of Atami, killing 23 people and leaving four people missing.
During Japan’s annual rainy season in 2018, floods and landslides killed more than 200 people in western Japan. The record rainfall has loosened the soil in some locations, according to Ryuta Kurora, director of forecasts at Japan’s weather office.
In a televised press briefing, he said, “We advise citizens to continue to exercise serious caution for landslides.”
