TOKYO: Authorities announced on Saturday, June 3, that heavy rains has killed one man, left two missing, and injured dozens more. Thousands of people have also issued departure warnings.
The remnants of the previous Typhoon Mawar, which is now a tropical storm, are to blame for the flooding.
A man in his 60s was found in a submerged vehicle in the Toyohashi region of central Aichi, where the nation’s highest-level evacuation alert was issued on Friday, but he was eventually confirmed dead, according to an AFP report from the city.
Officials informed AFP that they had resumed the hunt for one man and one woman missing in the area in western Wakayama, where some river burst their banks.
As of Saturday night, the Fire and Disaster Management Agency reported that six persons had sustained serious injuries and 24 had small ones.
As storms subsided in central and western Japan, some evacuation requests— which are not required, even at the highest degree — were downgraded on Saturday.
However, early in the morning, fresh instructions about flood risks were issued in areas nearby to Tokyo.
The Japan Meteorological Agency advised locals to” remain on high alert for floods, overflowing river, and inundation of low-laying areas” as many places, including Aichi’s Toyohashi and Koshigaya near Tokyo, apparently saw the highest 24 hour rainfall on record.
Power interruptions affected about 4, 000 homes in areas near Tokyo, according to the Tokyo Electric Power Company.
Japan Railway reported that Shinkansen gun railways were also delayed between Tokyo and Nagoya, but NHK, a public broadcaster, said they would resume service at noon.
Because a warmer atmosphere holds more water, experts claim that climate change is increasing the risk of heavy weather in Japan and other places.
In the main resort town of Atami, a disastrous landslide caused by heavy rain in 2021 resulted in the deaths of 27 people.
Additionally, during the nation’s yearly gloomy period in 2018, more than 200 people were killed in northern Japan by floods and landslides.
Mawar, which was a storms at the time, passed earlier this week just north of the Pacific island of Guam, uprooting branches and temporarily cutting off power to tens of thousands of properties.