NAIROBI, Kenya - Two months of relentless rains have submerged villages and farms and sent rivers of mud crashing into houses across East Africa, with at least 265 killed, according to an AFP tally, as meteorologists warn of more to come.
The extreme downpours have affected close to two million people and washed away tens of thousands of livestock in Kenya, Somalia, Burundi, Tanzania, South Sudan, Uganda, Djibouti and Ethiopia.
With a tropical storm headed for Somalia and more rain forecast across the region in the coming weeks, fears are rising over waterborne diseases and the prospect of hunger as crops are destroyed.
In Burundi, 38 people died on Wednesday night after heavy rains triggered landslides that swept through hillside communities in the northwest of the country, according to a provisional police toll on Thursday.
"It happened in the night, when everyone was at home, and landslides hit three very steep hills and buried everything in their path," a witness told AFP.
"Whole families were buried alive in their homes or in the fields. It was terrifying."
Kenya has been hard hit with 132 killed and 17,000 displaced, schools, roads, and health centers flooded, and water systems clogged across the country, government spokesman Cyrus Oguna said in a statement on Tuesday.
The "weather forecast has indicated that the current rains are not expected to cease until the end of December 2019," the statement said.
In South Sudan, the UN refugee agency UNHCR said nearly a million people have been affected by floodwaters which submerged whole towns, compounding an already dire humanitarian situation after six years of war.
Flooding has also affected 570,000 people in Somalia, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
The European humanitarian agency ECHO meanwhile warned of a tropical storm due to hit northeastern Somalia on Friday, bringing the threat of more flash floods.
'Multiple landslides'
In Tanzania, 55 people have died, according to an AFP tally of police figures, including 30 in flash floods in the northeast in October, 15 whose car was swept away by floodwaters in the town of Tanga, and 10 who drowned last month in northern Mwanza.
In Uganda, eight people have died and over 80,000 have been displaced by flooding and mudslides this week, Disaster Preparedness Minister Musa Ecweru said in a statement.
Days of heavy rainfall on Mount Elgon on Tuesday caused "multiple landslides in... Bududa district killing four people, injuring five and displacing over 6,000 people".
In Sironko district, also on Mount Elgon, "two adults and two children were killed" and over 4,000 people affected.
"The risk of more flooding and landslides is real," the minister warned.
Ethiopia has also been affected, with 22 people dying in a landslide in the south of the country in October.
Djibouti has also experienced unusually heavy rains, with a joint government and United Nations press statement reporting that some areas received "the equivalent of 2 years of rainfall occurred in one day" in heavy downpours two weeks ago.
"Some 10 people (7 children) have reportedly been killed," said the statement, adding that 250,000 were affected countrywide.
Warm Indian Ocean waters to blame
The extreme weather is blamed on the Indian Ocean Dipole -- a climate system defined by the difference in sea surface temperature between the western and eastern areas of the ocean.
At the moment, the ocean around East Africa is far warmer than usual, resulting in higher evaporation and moist air flowing inwards over the continent as rain: the hallmarks of a "positive" dipole.
Scientists say the strength of this dipole is of a magnitude not seen in years, perhaps even decades.
These waters around East Africa have been about two degrees warmer than those of the eastern Indian Ocean near Australia -- an imbalance well beyond the norm.
The heavy rains have also wrought destruction in central Africa, with scores killed in the Democratic Republic of Congo, including 41 in the capital Kinshasa last week.
In the Central African Republic, OCHA says around 100,000 people have been displaced.
source: news.abs-cbn.com
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
