Two Dead as Floods Batter Western Japan

[senorpepr]

TOKYO (Reuters) - Heavy rains battered part of western Japan on Sunday, sending rivers surging over their banks, causing two deaths and forcing the evacuation of thousands.

Nearly 40,000 households in Fukui prefecture were urged to evacuate after the area was hit by torrential rains accompanied by thunderstorms and strong winds.

Two people had died in Fukui and one was missing, police said. The number of people dead after torrential rains last week in the northern prefecture of Niigata rose to 15.

Some 11 inches of rain fell in parts of Fukui from Saturday evening to Sunday morning, with 4.7 inches predicted to fall by midnight, the Meteorological Agency said.

Total rainfall in the 24 hours to midnight was likely to reach 13.7 inches in some areas, it added, warning of a growing danger of floods and landslides.

Television footage showed muddy, swollen rivers threatening to burst their banks and bridges choked with brush and trees, and helicopters were pressed in to evacuate people trapped in homes.

"They told us to evacuate, and when we went out, the street was already a river," one woman told NHK national television.

In one scene broadcast by NHK, muddy water trickled from cracks in a concrete breakwater.

"The water rose above the floor of our house in less than three hours this morning," one man told NHK as he sat in a temporary shelter. "It's quite scary."

Some train services in the affected area were halted.

The death toll from flooding in Niigata last week rose to 15 on Sunday after one more body was found. Virtually all the victims were elderly people in their 70s and 80s.

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