Several more rivers overflowed their banks as torrential rain continued Wednesday in parts of Japan, washing away roads and homes and leaving behind piles of debris.
The death toll climbed to 58 on Wednesday as the impacts of the unprecedented rainfall reached Japan's main island of Honshu, according to the Associated Press. At least 14 people were still missing.
As many as 3.6 million people were told to evacuate in recent days as rainfall pummeled the region. About 876,000 were under evacuation instructions as of Wednesday afternoon local time, according to Kyodo News.
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A man looks at his parents' house hit by heavy rain in Kuma village, Kumamoto prefecture, southern Japan Wednesday, July 8, 2020. Floodwaters flowed down streets in southern Japanese towns hit by heavy rains.Flooding and mudslides left residents and tourists stranded in areas around Nagano and Gifu.
"The sound of rain was so loud it woke me up many times during the night," Manabu Kobayashi, 60, a construction company executive who lives in the city of Gero, where around 400 homes were cut off due to flooding, told Kyodo News.
Parts of a highway were swept away and collapsed and dozens of homes were flooded in the city.
More than 2,200 schools and universities in 17 prefectures canceled classes.
Tens of thousands of soldiers and other rescue workers continued to dig through mud and debris Wednesday looking for missing people and pulling residents from flooded homes across southwestern Japan, where at least 14 people remained missing in Kumamoto prefecture.
Prime Minister Abe Shinzo told a government task force to speed up work to declare an "extraordinary disaster" that would enable victims to receive special support to rebuild their lives, NHK Television reported. Abe said many areas remain cut off by floods and landslides.
Most of the fatalities have been in Kumamoto prefecture on Kyushu, including an elderly couple who died when their car slid into a flooded rice field in Yamaga and submerged, the Asahi Shimbun reported.
"The village of Kuma in (Kumamoto prefecture) is severely isolated. Our SDF personnel are delivering water and food on foot, and checking their safety," Defense Minister Taro Kono said on Twitter.
Nearly 3,000 households in Kumamoto and neighboring prefectures are without running water, the welfare ministry said, and thousands more have no electricity.
On the northern end of the island, an 87-year-old woman was found dead in her flooded home in Fukuoka prefecture, Kyodo News reported.
Japan Self Defense Force members waded through knee-deep water in the streets of Omuta to evacuate hundreds of residents from flooded houses, NHK reported.
"The water came up to my waist. I was using all of my strength to wade through but was almost swept away," one woman told NHK.
In neighboring Oita prefecture, a man told police his 70-year-old wife was swept away with their house in Hita when the Chikugogawa River spilled out of its banks, according to Asahi Shimbun.
The rain is forecast to continue in the coming days.
"The flooding rainfall in the southern half of Japan has been along a stalled boundary called a baiu front," weather.com senior meteorologist Chris Dolce said Wednesday. "The baiu front and a wave of low pressure along it will likely wring out more heavy, flooding rainfall into the weekend."
Additional rainfall could reach more than 10 inches.
The Weather Company’s primary journalistic mission is to report on breaking weather news, the environment and the importance of science to our lives. This story does not necessarily represent the position of our parent company, IBM.
The Weather Company’s primary journalistic mission is to report on breaking weather news, the environment and the importance of science to our lives. This story does not necessarily represent the position of our parent company, IBM.
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