TOKYO, July 3 — Japan ordered more than one million people on the southernmost island of Kyushu to take shelter in evacuation centres and other safe areas today as heavy rain threatened to trigger widespread landslides.
Some parts of southern Kyushu have received up to 1,000mm of rain since Friday, about as much as usually falls in the whole month of July, Japanese broadcaster NHK said, and forecasters expect as much as 300mm more rainfall in some areas by tomorrow evening.
Evacuation orders were issued for 1.02 million residents of Kagoshima and Miyazaki prefectures at the southern tip of Kyushu, NHK said. Some 930,000 more were advised to evacuate, but no data was immediately available about how many had actually done so.
“I live alone next to a river, and it’s scary to think of water rising,” one woman in an evacuation centre told NHK. Another said the volume of rain that had fallen was “terrible”.
Television footage showed rivers filled with fast-moving brown water, but none had overflowed their banks as of this evening, although one low dike had broken.
Several small landslides were reported, including one that swept away two cars. No injuries have been reported so far.
In Tokyo, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said residents should “take steps to protect their lives, including early evacuation,” and he ordered the military to prepare for rescue operations.
Abe was criticised for the government’s slow response in July a year ago, when heavy rains triggered landslides and floods, killing more than 200 people in Japan’s worst weather disaster in 36 years. — Reuters
