Hopes of finding survivors were fading on Tuesday as rescue workers carried out house-to-house searches after days of deadly floods and landslides that have claimed 156 lives in Japan's worst weather-related disaster for decades.
The record downpours that began last week have stopped and receding flood waters have laid bare the destruction that has cut a swathe through the west of the country.
In the city of Kurashiki, the flooding engulfed entire districts at one point, forcing some people to their rooftops to wait for rescue.
Rescue workers were going door-to-door, looking for survivors -- or victims -- of the disaster.
"It's what we call a grid operation, where we are checking every single house to see if there are people still trapped inside them," an official with the local Okayama prefecture government told AFP.
"We know it's a race against time, we are trying as hard as we can."
Hideto Yamanaka was leading a team of around 60 firefighters dispatched from outside the prefecture searching homes.
"I'm afraid elderly people who were living alone may have failed to escape," said Yamanaka, 53.
"Physically weak people may have been late in getting out when it suddenly started raining hard, swamping the area," he told AFP.
As night fell, rescuers continued searches, "but we still don't know if we will carry out the operation around the clock," said Akiko Harada, a spokeswoman at the disaster management section of the city of Hiroshima, where 14 people were still unaccounted for.
In the Mabi district of Kurashiki, the water left behind a fine yellow silt that has transformed the area into moonscape.
Cars driving through kicked up clouds of dust. People walking around wore medical masks or covered their mouths with small towels to protect themselves against the particulates.
Stores were still closed, and inside one barber's shop the red sofas, customer chairs, and standing hair dryers were all covered with the same silt.
Fumiko Inokuchi, 61, was inside her home, sorting through the damage caused by floods that submerged the entire first floor.
She escaped the house on Saturday, crossing the street to take shelter in a three-storey care home for the elderly, from where she watched in horror as the waters rose.
"I saw my house sink underwater and I couldn't do anything at all, there was just nothing I could do. I felt helpless," she said, retrieving a photo of her children playing baseball.
"I got married here, and we built this house two years afterwards. We raised our three small sons to adulthood here, there are so many memories," she said, her eyes welling with tears.
- New dangers from heat -
It is Japan's deadliest weather-related disaster in more than three decades, and has sparked national grief.
On Monday, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe cancelled a four-stop foreign trip as the death toll rose, and he will visit Okayama on Wednesday.
Top government spokesman Yoshihide Suga said Tuesday that at least 156 people had been killed. Media reports said dozens more were missing and the toll was expected to rise further.
Around 75,000 police, firemen and troops have been deployed in the search and rescue operation across parts of central and western Japan, Suga said, warning that hot weather posed new risks.
Thousands of people remain in shelters, and local authorities in some areas were offering drinking water and bathing services for those without their own supply.
"It will be over 35 Celsius (95 degrees Fahrenheit) in some areas... Please be careful about heatstroke if you're doing reconstruction outdoors, and continue to be vigilant about landslides," Suga said.
The government said it would tap around $20 million in reserve funds to provide aid to those affected by the disaster.
And even with the rains over, the risk of flooding remained, with the town of Fuchu in Hiroshima issuing a new evacuation order as a local river burst its banks.
"Driftwood and dirt has piled up... and now the water has started overflowing from the river," a spokesman for the local fire department told AFP.
"We are on high alert," he added.
In Ehime prefecture, authorities said they were struggling to get emergency food and water to some cut-off areas.
"We are sending them by boat and air routes," said Yoshinobu Katsuura, a spokesman for the prefecture's disaster management department.
"It will take a lot of time to see devastated areas recover."
source: news.abs-cbn.com
TOKYO -- The death toll from unprecedented rains in Japan rose to at least 64 on Sunday after rivers burst their banks and forced several million people from their homes, media reports said, with more rain set to hit some areas for at least another day.
Torrential rains pounded some parts of western Japan with three times the usual precipitation for a normal July and set off landslides and sent rivers surging over their banks, trapping many people in their houses or on rooftops.
"We've never experienced this kind of rain before," an official at the Japanese Meteorological Agency (JMA) told a news conference. "This is a situation of extreme danger."
At least 64 people were killed and 44 missing, national broadcaster NHK said after the death toll had been put at 49 overnight. Among the missing was a 9-year-old boy believed trapped in his house by a landslide that killed at least three others, one of them a man in his 80s.
"All I have is what I'm wearing," a rescued woman clutching a toy poodle told NHK television.
"We had fled to the second floor but then the water rose more, so we went up to the third floor," she said.
Japan's government set up an emergency management centre at the prime minister's office and some 54,000 rescuers from the military, police and fire departments were dispatched across a wide swath of southwestern and western Japan.
"There are still many people missing and others in need of help, we are working against time," Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said.
Emergency warnings for severe rain remained in effect for three prefectures, with 11 inches predicted to fall by Monday morning in parts of the smallest main island of Shikoku.
Evacuation orders remained in place for some 2 million people and another 2.3 million were advised to evacuate, although rain had stopped and floodwaters receded in some areas. Landslide warnings were issued in more than a quarter of the nation's prefectures.
'POURING DOWN'
"My husband couldn't make it home from work since the road was flooded, and since it was pouring down rain I didn't have enough courage to walk to an evacuation center with two infants after dark," one woman wrote on Twitter, without giving further details.
The rain began late last week as the remnants of a typhoon fed into a seasonal rainy front, with humid, warm air pouring in from the Pacific making it still more active - a pattern similar to one that set off flooding in southwestern Japan exactly a year ago that killed dozens. The front then remained in one place for an unusually long time, the JMA said.
Roads were closed and train services suspended in parts of western Japan. Shinkansen bullet train services, resumed on a limited schedule after they were suspended on Friday.
Automakers including Mazda Motor Corp. and Daihatsu Diesel Manufacturing Co. suspended operations at several plants on Saturday due to a shortage of parts or dangerous conditions. They were set to decide later on Sunday on plans for the coming week.
Electronics maker Panasonic Corp. said one plant in Okayama, western Japan, could not be reached due to road closures, although it had been closed for the weekend anyway. A decision about next week would be made on Monday.
While the Japanese government monitors weather conditions closely and issues warnings from an early stage, the fact that much of the country outside major cities is mountainous and building takes place on virtually every bit of usable land leaves it vulnerable to disasters.
Reforestation policies after World War II that saw many mountains logged and replanted with trees whose roots are less able to retain water have also contributed to the danger.
source: news.abs-cbn.com
The death toll from heavy rains rose to five with at least three others feared dead and 28 missing, as downpours continued lashing western Japan on Saturday.
Rescue crews expanded their search for people trapped, injured or dead, as heavy rainfall caused flooding and landslides in wider areas, in Hiroshima and Okayama prefectures in particular.
Emergency warnings were lifted by early Saturday in Fukuoka, Saga and Nagasaki but remain in five other prefectures including Hiroshima and Okayama.
Since the downpour began Thursday, the weather agency has forecast record amounts of rain through Sunday, warning of flooding, mudslides and lightning strikes.
The agency warned of potential heavy rain of up to 80 millimeters per hour in some areas. In the 24-hour period through 6 a.m. on Sunday, 300 millimeters of rain is forecast in the Shikoku and northern Kyushu regions, 250 mm in the southern Kyushu and Tokai regions, and 200 mm in the Chugoku, Kinki and Hokuriku regions.
==Kyodo
source: news.abs-cbn.com
