Rescue teams were hard at work Sunday, September 22, in central Japan, where floods and landslides left one dead and at least eleven missing. The rains “unprecedented” Storms that have hit Ishikawa prefecture since Saturday have begun to calm down, leaving behind muddy scenes of devastation, as the National Meteorological Agency (JMA) urged people to remain alert for soft ground and other hazards. The agency, however, lowered its maximum alert to the second-highest alert on Sunday.
Muddy rivers are especially flooded in Anamizu, a town on the Noto Peninsula where fresh rain fell on houses damaged by the Sept. 1 earthquake on Sunday morning.Ahem January, when at least 318 people died, Agence France-Presse journalists reported. A message broadcast by the city’s disaster prevention system warned residents that rain could flood sewage systems and sewage could rise to the surface.
Satoshi Sugimoto, a forecaster at the JMA agency, reported “torrential rains of unprecedented magnitude”. Rainfall exceeded 540 mm over 72 hours in Wajima City, also in Ishikawa Prefecture, on Sunday morning, the heaviest continuous rainfall since records began in 1976.
Some 110,000 people called to evacuate
Local authorities in Ishikawa have called for the evacuation of some 110,000 people, while the JMA agency issued an emergency alert for the region, which is still in effect on Sunday. In addition to flooded buildings, numerous landslides have blocked roads, while some 5,000 homes have been left without electricity and at least 1,700 homes without running water, local authorities said.
The massive flooding affected many homes, including eight temporary housing centres in Wajima and Suzu, where victims of the 7.5-magnitude earthquake earlier this year still live. In Ishikawa Prefecture, one person died, another was seriously injured and eight were missing, the regional government said in a statement.
At a road restoration site in Wajima, three workers working for the Land Ministry have been missing since Saturday following a landslide, local government official Yoshiyuki Tokuhashi told Agence France-Presse on Sunday. One of his colleagues, initially considered missing, has since been found. “take refuge in the tunnel” where twenty-six of his colleagues had taken refuge before him, Tokuhashi said.
A dozen rivers in the region are overflowing, carrying trees and trash that are often blocked by bridges. The military has been called in to reinforce the entire rural region along the Sea of Japan. On Sunday, authorities in two prefectures north of Ishikawa, Niigata and Yamagata, called for the evacuation of 16,800 residents.
