WAJIMA: Floods and landslides killed one person and left at least 11 missing in central Japan, with recovery teams at work on Sunday in a remote peninsula already devastated by a major earthquake this year. "Unprecedented" heavy rains that lashed the area from Saturday began to subside, leaving muddy scenes of destruction as the national weather agency urged people to stay vigilant for loose ground and other dangers.
In the city of Wajima, splintered branches and a huge uprooted tree piled up at a bridge over a river whose raging brown waters almost reached ground level.
People were seen wading into the mud to try to dig out half-buried cars, while elsewhere flood waters inundated emergency housing built for those who had lost their homes in the New Year's Day earthquake that killed at least 318 people.
Eight temporary housing complexes were affected in Wajima and Suzu, two of the cities on the Noto Peninsula ravaged by the magnitude-7.5 quake, which toppled buildings, triggered tsunami waves and sparked a major fire.
More than 540 millimetres of rainfall was recorded in Wajima in the 72 hours to Sunday morning — the heaviest continuous rain since comparative data became available in 1976.
Landslides blocked roads, complicating rescue efforts, and tens of thousands of people in the wider region were urged to evacuate.
Muddy rivers ran high in Anamizu, south of Wajima, where more rain fell on Sunday morning onto quake-damaged houses and the shattered stone columns of a shrine still lying on the ground months after they were toppled.
A message blared from the city's loudspeaker disaster prevention system warning residents that the rain could flood the sewer system and dirty water could rise up.
Military personnel have been sent to the Ishikawa region on the Sea of Japan coast to join rescue workers, top government spokesman Yoshimasa Hayashi said on Saturday.
Some 5,000 households were without power and at least 1,700 households were without running water, the Ishikawa regional government said. The Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) downgraded its top warning to the second-highest alert on Sunday.
The areas under the emergency warning saw "heavy rain of unprecedented levels", JMA forecaster Satoshi Sugimoto said on Saturday, adding "it is a situation in which you have to secure your safety immediately". — AFP
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