Eastern Japan rain kills nine, local broadcaster reports
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Torrential downpours starting late on Aug 13 triggered landslide warnings and power outages.
PHOTO: REUTERS
TOKYO – Heavy rain that battered eastern Japan has left nine people dead, public broadcaster NHK said on Aug 16, after an “unprecedented” deluge that flooded over a thousand homes and snarled up roads and rail services.
Torrential downpours starting late on Aug 13 triggered landslide warnings and power outages, with forecasters issuing the highest-level heavy rain warning for the Chiba region for the first time. A weather station in the prefecture recorded 30cm of rain in 24 hours, making it the area’s wettest August in six decades.
By the morning of Aug 14, the city of Chiba logged more than three times the rainfall typically seen in the whole of August, Tokyo’s Land Ministry said.
Nine have since died in the rain, NHK reported on the morning of Aug 16, citing its own tally.
Chiba’s disaster management office as at the evening of Aug 15 listed eight dead, some trapped inside submerged cars and others found on flooded streets. More than 70 houses across the Chiba region were partially destroyed by the rain, the prefecture’s latest tally showed. And over a thousand households reported being flooded, nearly 600 of which saw water surge above the floorboards.
An estimated 1,200 cars also remain abandoned on roads, local media said, with the authorities working on towing them away.
An official from Japan’s Meteorological Agency told a news conference on Aug 13 that it was “shaping up to be an unprecedented level of heavy rain”.
Scientists say human-driven climate change is making extreme weather more frequent, prolonged and intense. AFP
