TOKYO (Reuters) - As the death toll rose from Japan's deadliest typhoon in two decades, experts warned on Friday that climate change could herald a stormier future.
A powerful typhoon that swept through the country this week killed at least 75 people, police said, and hopes were fading for 15 missing in floods and landslides.
Typhoon Tokage -- "lizard" in Japanese -- was the record 10th to hit Japan this year. Normally, about three make landfall during the typhoon season that usually ends in late October.
Many people died in landslides set off by heavy rains while others were caught in flooding or were swept away by massive waves as the storm cut a swathe through southern and central Japan before heading out to sea east of Tokyo on Thursday.
Thirty-seven mostly elderly passengers who had been trapped on the roof of a bus overnight by surging floodwaters left hospital, where they were being treated for exposure, telling reporters how they had tied the bus's curtains around their waists to keep from being swept away.
"At that time, I really thought it was all over, but all of us managed to remain strong," one woman told Kyodo news agency.
Others around Japan began shoveling mud from their homes and taking stock of their losses.
"The water came, the water went. Now everything is mud," an elderly woman told national broadcaster NHK as she tossed a sodden cushion into a dust bin.
With time passing, hopes were fading for the missing as rescuers dug through the rubble of collapsed houses.
Experts said it was a scene that may be repeated more frequently in the future.
Japan has suffered from an unusual number of storms this year due to warmer than usual sea water and weaker than normal Pacific high pressure areas, which some people blame on global warming.
"Global warming is likely to be part of this, but probably not all of it," said Satoru Saito at Japan's Meteorological Agency. "There's many things we still don't understand."
Takehiko Yamamura, president of private research center Disaster Prevention System Institute, took a bleaker view.
"Warmer sea water is something we may well see again," he said. "I believe many storms could come over the next few years.
UNLUCKY COMBINATION
The number of people killed or unaccounted for was the highest for a single typhoon since 95 died or went missing in a storm in 1982, the Japan Meteorological Agency said.
So far this year about 170 people have been killed or are missing as a result of typhoons.
The sheer size of the latest storm, which had a radius of about 300 miles, accounted for much of the damage but experts said other factors were at work too.
"There have been so many typhoons that mud has accumulated on the bottom of rivers, making them much shallower," said Yamamura.
"This meant they flooded more quickly."
The death toll from landslides was also high due at least partly to the fact that, with some 70 percent of Japan covered by mountains, many homes are built under steep slopes.
There was also an unlucky combination of factors this year that included repeated heavy rains and the numerous small earthquakes that have rocked Japan over the past few months, all of which weakened the earth, Yamamura said.
Many of Japan's mountains have also been planted with fast-growing but shallow-rooted trees such as cedars, which do little to hold the earth if it starts to slide.
Things could get worse in the future, Yamamura said.
"Just as we now have the tea ceremony, we may have to develop a whole new set of behaviors that allow us to live with the possibility of natural disasters," he said.
The latest storm flooded 40,338 houses and seriously damaged or destroyed 2,706, the government's Fire and Disaster Management Agency said. A typhoon earlier in the month damaged or wrecked 4,906 houses, but flooded a far fewer 4,839.
Government figures show that up to Oct 15., before the latest storm, natural disaster damages in Japan this year totaled 725.9 billion yen ($6.76 billion), surpassing last year's figure of 405.2 billion for the whole year and the highest since 1999.
The government may have to compile an extra budget for repairs and rescue efforts, Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiroyuki Hosoda said on Friday.