Again the forces of nature in Japan cause death and destruction. Record heavy rains caused floods and landslides. Even after the precipitation has subsided, dangers continue to threaten.
Tokyo – At least six people were killed in the torrential rain in Japan. As the Japanese television broadcaster NHK reported on Sunday, a mother and her two seven and twelve year old children died in a landslide in Nagano prefecture.
They were in a building that was hit by the landslide. At first they were diagnosed with “cardiac arrest and respiratory arrest”. Two other people were injured, three were uninjured. In the same prefecture, two elderly women were found by a canal and later pronounced dead. In Nagasaki Prefecture on the hard-hit southwestern main island of Kyushu, a woman had also previously died in a landslide. Her husband and daughter were missing.
A total of four people were missing, the broadcaster reported. Although it stopped raining in large parts of Kyushu on Sunday morning, the authorities continued to warn of the risk of floods and landslides as a result of the softened soil. A hospital in Saga Prefecture was trapped by the masses of water, but according to the media, the patients could be brought to safety on higher floors. More than a dozen rivers in seven prefectures had overflowed. Whole streets in Saga were flooded with water. Rescue workers brought residents to safety with boats.
In several prefectures of Japan, three times the normal rainfall was recorded within one month. Hundreds of thousands of people were called on the weekend to get to safety. It also rained heavily in the Tokyo area. There, the authorities warned residents in areas at risk of flooding via loudspeakers and via messages on smartphones. Heavy rains are also expected for the next few days.
As a result of global warming, the island kingdom of Japan is increasingly being hit by such heavy rains. As a result, landslides are increasingly common in the mountainous archipelago. dpa
