Again the forces of nature haunt Japan and cause chaos and destruction. A mudslide takes numerous houses with it. Several people are missing.
Tokyo – With a thunderous roar, huge masses of mud rush down the slope and roll down everything that comes in their way: electricity pylons, cars, entire residential buildings that collapse like houses of cards. Roads sink into the morass.
The pictures from the Japanese coastal town of Atami, known for its hot onsen baths, on Saturday are reminiscent of scenes like a tsunami disaster. The fate of around 20 people was initially uncertain, as reported by local media from Shizuoka Prefecture, southwest of Tokyo. Two victims of the accident were found with “cardiac arrest and respiratory arrest,” it said. This is a common phrase in Japan before human deaths are officially confirmed.
“The earth slid to the front of the shop. It sounded like an excavator smashing a house, ”the employee of a glass studio in Atami told reporters. Cars parked in front of it were washed away. The mudslide covered a wide area and slid close to the coast. Rescue workers looked for other missing persons with the support of soldiers who had been summoned. At least ten residential buildings were completely destroyed. According to the mayor of Atami, up to 300 buildings were damaged.
The authorities issued the highest warning level and called on around 25,000 households to get to safety. The meteorological authority in Tokyo also warned of heavy rains in large areas of the country for the next few days. Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga convened a crisis team in the capital. Japanese television broadcast footage of citizens capturing the moment on Twitter when suddenly the black wave of mud broke through several houses from a slope and carried everything with it.
The accident site is near a volcano and has deposits of volcanic ash and ejecta, explained Professor Susumu Yasuda from Tokyo Denki University in the newspaper “Asahi Shimbun”. In the case of the slope concerned, it was also likely that it could come off as it is now. Meanwhile, residents in other places along the country’s Pacific coast have also been warned to seek safety from swelling rivers, flooding and possible landslides.
The heavy rainfall also led to interruptions in rail traffic. Shinkansen bullet trains between Tokyo and Shin-Osaka were temporarily out of service. Meanwhile, people in Atami started cleaning up the same day.
In the course of global warming, Japan is recording more and more heavy rainfall, which also leads to more and more landslides. In the past ten years, according to official information, an average of almost 1,500 landslides have occurred in the mountainous island kingdom – that is almost twice as many as in the previous ten years. dpa
