Flood-battered Japan warily eyes typhoon

ASO, Japan – Flood-battered southwestern Japan on Tuesday, July 17, braced for a typhoon amid fears it could heap further misery on an area where at least 32 are dead or missing after record rainfall.

Typhoon Khanun was lashing the Amami island chain, south of Kyushu where four days of torrential rain have sparked landslides and flooding, forcing hundreds of thousands of people from their homes.

Khanun — “jack fruit” in Thai — packing winds of up to 108 kilometers (67 miles) per hour, was moving west-northwest at 30 kilometers per hour and was expected to graze the west of Kyushu island, the Japan Meteorological Agency said.

Tuesday morning brought a lull in the rainfall for most of the region, but the weather agency was warning that there could be up to 15 centimeters (six inches) of rain in the 24 hours to 6:00 pm (0900 GMT) in the north of Kyushu.

In hard-hit Minamiaso in Kumamoto prefecture, 700 people remained unable to return to their homes because of landslide fears.

“We started reconstruction work on damaged roads yesterday, but workers have been forced to step aside repeatedly by occasional rains,” said local official Hideki Kuraoka.

“Even a small amount of rain could trigger mudslides and more downpours are expected this afternoon. We remain on high alert,” he said.

Kuraoka said even though forecasters said they did not expect a direct hit from the typhoon, it was still a worry.

“We cannot know what damage will be caused by the typhoon,” he said. “We are being extremely vigilant about it.”

Most of the 400,000 people who were ordered or advised to leave their homes were allowed to return after authorities began lifting evacuation orders Sunday.

Roads in Aso city remained flooded and inaccessible.

Troops who were called in to help over the weekend on Tuesday continued their search for four people officially recorded as missing.

They recovered a man’s body from a ditch in Aso, believed to be one of the four still missing, raising the total death toll from landslides and floods across the affected area to 29, local reports said.

Aso, which sits at the foot of a volcano, has seen more than 80 centimeters of rain over the last few days, triggering huge mudslides that swamped whole communities and killed at least 20 people in the city alone.

An AFP photographer in the city said some people who had been evacuated from their homes were seeking shelter in municipal buildings.

In scenes reminiscent of last year’s devastating tsunami, families sat on mats on wooden floors, or gathered around televisions to watch the latest forecasts.

Other parts of Japan were dealing with soaring temperatures as the first really hot days of the sometimes punishing Japanese summer took hold.

The weather agency warned Tokyo was likely to see temperatures of up to 34 degree Celsius (93.2 degree Fahrenheit), while Kumagaya, north of the capital, could see the mercury peak at 37 degrees.

On Monday, a man in his 80s died in central Niigata prefecture apparently from heat stroke, while nearly 700 people were taken to hospital due to heat exhaustion, local media said.

With the vast bulk of Japan’s nuclear power stations offline in the aftermath of the tsunami-sparked Fukushima disaster, the country is being urged to cut down on electricity usage and the excessive use of air conditioners is being discouraged. – Kazuhiro Nogi, Agence France-Presse