[ad_1]
Research and clean-up work continues under a blazing sun with 75,000 rescuers, said Yoshihide Suga, the spokesman for the executive. It is the most serious disaster related to the rains in the archipelago for more than 30 years.
Faced with the gravity of the situation, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has decided, according to the media, to cancel a tour which was to begin Wednesday in Belgium and continue in France, Saudi Arabia and Egypt to give priority to the victims.
In the city of Kumano, known throughout the world for its makeup brushes appreciated by the greatest actresses In the world, huge landslides have taken homes that are nothing more than heaps of wood, AFP reporters found.
The hot sun was beginning to dry up the mud. Equipped with construction equipment, shovels or chainsaws, rescuers were looking for traces of a dozen missing residents.
We are removing debris with heavy equipment where we can . We also clear homes destroyed, otherwise it is impossible to reach potential survivors trapped underneath.
"I would have liked my sister and her family to evacuate earlier », Kosuke Kiyohara laments in front of the ransacked home of missing relatives.
Around the world, returning to their homes after the end of the rain, residents began to realize the extent of the disaster, with neighborhoods drowned, up-and-down dwellings, cars lying in craters of totally collapsed roads, gigantic landslides, bridges washed away, and other scenes of desolation.
Vigilance Is Imperative
In Kurashiki City, Okayama Province, "No-one seems to be asking for help" from roofs or terraces this city, according to observations made by helicopter, told AFP Monday morning a rescuer.
"The rescuers were traveling with boats yesterday because of the magnitude of the floods, but the water is gradually withdrawing today and if the level drops sufficiently, they will be able to access areas hard hit by the road or on foot, "a spokesman for the Okayama Prefecture disaster management office told AFP by telephone.
"It is not raining today, but we must remain vigilant against the mudslides," she insisted.
This is one of the most serious disasters of this kind in recent years. years in Japan, with a number of victims who is now the one recorded during landslides in Hiroshima in 2014, with 74 deaths.
It is now necessary to go back in the annals at the passage of two typhoons in August / September 2011 to find a comparable disaster (a hundred deaths).
The state of maximum alert was lifted everywhere Sunday in the day, but lower levels of warning are maintained.
"The relief operations are maintained 24 hours a day," said Sunday at the AFP Yoshihide Fujitani, Hiroshima Prefecture Disaster Management Officer
"We also take care of evacuees and try to rehabilitate vital infrastructure such as water and gas distribution. , he said. We are doing our best.
75,000 rescuers in the field
Food is lacking in grocery stores that are no longer supplied.
"This is an abnormal situation," insisted an agency official Yasushi Kajiwara at a press briefing on Sunday
Precipitation between Friday and Sunday reached record highs in 93 observation points in 14 prefectures.
Monday, 20,000 firefighters, police and soldiers, and The self-defense forces came in support of the 54,000 already deployed in the field. They are doing their "best to save lives," in the words of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
Up to 5 million people have been urged to evacuate, but these orders are not binding. sometimes, when the water rose very quickly, it might be more risky to try to escape than to take refuge on its roof.
Factories (Panasonic, Mitsubishi Motors, Mazda) were forced to stop their production in the region, as well as services like Amazon.
Japan is often crossed by important rainy fronts in addition to the sometimes deadly typhoons that sweep it regularly in summer.
Source link
