[ad_1]
Rescuers were walking through the mud-covered hills and along the banks on Tuesday, searching for dozens of people missing after heavy rains that caused flooding and mudslides in southwestern Japan.
More than 50 people are missing For Tuesday night, many in the most affected region of Hiroshima. Thousands of homes still did not have potable water and electricity in Hiroshima and other hard-hit areas. Locals lined up in the heat of the sun as temperatures reached 35 ° C, which increased the risk of heat stroke.
In another town of Ozu, in Ehime Prefecture, the water supply was completely cut off. In a large supermarket in town, employees were selling bottled water and tea, cups of noodles and other canned goods that survived the floods, while employees were cleaning up the damaged goods, throwing out Objects in dozens of landslides and floods in much of western Japan have left at least 155 dead, said Yoshihide Suga, secretary general of the cabinet, at a conference of press. Fuchu City, Hiroshima Prefecture. (Jiji Press / EPA-EFE)
Suga said the government set up a task force and spent 2 billion yen to speed up deliveries of supplies and other aid to health centers. Evacuation and to residents of the region
Earlier Tuesday, the Self Defense Force transported seven tank trucks from Hiroshima to Kure, an industrial city whose 226,000 inhabitants were cut off from rest of the prefecture because of the catastrophe
. Minister Shinzo Abe, who canceled a planned trip to Europe and the Middle East this week to oversee the emergency response, will visit disaster-affected areas in Okayama Prefecture, Suga said. The government has mobilized 75,000 soldiers and rescuers and nearly 80 helicopters for the search and rescue operation, Suga said.
The badessment of the victims was slowed by the magnitude of the affected area.
review his weather warning system, noting that rain warnings were issued after damage and losses had already occurred. According to the Japanese Meteorological Agency, 10 centimeters of rain per hour fell over much of southwestern Japan.
Akira Tanimoto said that his Hiroshima apartment had survived the floods and mudslides of his residential complex over the weekend. to return there with his wife and two pet birds, he can not because there is no water, power or food available.
& # 39; I can not go back & # 39;
After their desperate escape from flooding the apartment complex where a dozen of his neighbors were found dead, he returned home Monday to check his apartment, which was almost untouched. He was also to bring with him his beloved birds, which he had to leave behind first.
Tanimoto wants to go back there with his wife, Chieko, and their yellow and green parakeets, Pi-chan and Kyako-chan, but He said it would take a few weeks to recover the utilities and clean up the house. in law.
"I can not go back if I wanted to," said the retired 66-year-old. bird cage, in which the birds chirped while he was talking. "The electricity is cut off, the water is shut off and there is no information out there."
In the apartment complex of Tanimoto, about ten victims were found. He and his wife grabbed the necessary minimum and walked about 1.5 kilometers to a fire truck on Sunday after the floods and mudslides that hit the complex. Debris and mudslides had stopped just outside the couple's apartment door.
Akira Tanimoto, a native of Hiroshima, holds a birdcage in which her yellow and green parakeets chirped in an evacuation center transformed into a primary school in southwestern Japan. Tanimoto says that he is lucky to have survived and to be evacuated with his wife from an apartment complex hit by floodwaters. (Haruka Nuga / Associated Press)
Tanimoto thinks he and his wife are the lucky ones. "Some of our neighbors have seen their apartments destroyed, others are still looking for their family, so we are lucky, our parakeets have even survived," he said. relief goods have been delayed by damaged roads and transport systems, particularly in areas isolated by the disaster.
Residents of Yano School were receiving water, blankets and chargers of cell phones. But a local volunteer, 25-year-old Yuki Sato, said that local convenience stores were clearly short of supplies, so she did not buy anything because she wanted to save them for evacuees or those who did not. can not get out of the city. [19659002] Water supply and other relief was scarce in some of the other areas affected by disasters.
"No water, no food, nothing happens," Ichiro Tanabe, a 73-year-old resident in the nearby port city of Kure, told the Mainichi newspaper. "We will all be dry if we continue to be isolated."
The Sagawa Express Express delivery companies and Yamato Transport Co. and the freight service Japan Freight Railway Co. said some of their shipments to and from the flooded areas were suspended or reduced. Regional supermarket chains such as Every Co. have stated that a retail outlet is closed and that several other outlets have cut down on hours of service due to delivery delays and shortage of supply .
