11 missing, 1 dead and 400,000 flee their homes in Japan flooding
Some 400,000 people have been ordered or advised to evacuate their homes in south-west Japan after torrential rain triggered widespread flooding.
At least 10 people, including a child, were also missing in the swamping on Thursday, according to government and local media.
Police said a man was killed and his body was found washed up. They believe he was swept away in flooding in Asakita, Hiroshima prefecture.
Parts of Fukuoka Prefecture on the southwestern island of Kyushu were hit by 774 mm of rain in nine hours on Wednesday, about 2.2 times the amount of rain that falls in a normal July, NHK national television said.
In one of the worst-hit towns, Asakura in Fukuoka, one man managed a narrow escape when a landslide crushed his home on a steep mountain slope, NHK said.
Television footage showed rice fields and homes flooded after a river swollen by the rains overflowed its banks, dragging vehicles into the riverbed and destroying dozens of buildings as well as roads and bridges. Soldiers waded gingerly through floodwaters, carrying one elderly man to safety, and they were evacuating families using inflatable boats.
The massive landslides caused by the flooding left at least two houses swept away.
Some 7,500 rescuers, including police, firefighters and soldiers from Japan’s Self Defence Forces, were mobilised to help with evacuations and search for the missing.
“It wasn’t just the rain, there was thunder and lightning, too. I couldn’t see anything ahead of me,” one woman at an evacuation center told NHK.
A schoolboy sitting with his family told NHK, “I haven’t heard from some of my friends, and I’m really worried.”
