Three missing, 4,000 evacuated in heavy Japan rains

TOKYO: At least three people were missing in Japan on Friday after heavy rains caused rivers to burst their banks, washing away cars and prompting several thousand locals to evacuate, authorities and media reports said.

Local governments in the northern prefectures of Yamagata and Akita on the main island of Honshu issued evacuation advisories to more than 200,000 people, the fire and disaster management agency said.

Of those, at least 4,000 people have evacuated to shelters, public broadcaster NHK reported.

Two rivers in Yamagata and one in Akita burst their banks, it said, with footage showing raging brown waters having swept away several cars including a police vehicle that was upside down.

“Three people, including two police officers who were on a mission searching for a missing man, are unaccounted for,” a local official told AFP.

Japan’s weather agency this week issued its highest emergency alert for heavy rain for Sakta and Tuza in Yamagata prefecture.

It later downgraded the warning by one notch in the country’s five-tier warning system.

But the Japan Meteorological Agency called for the public to stay vigilant for potential landslides and flooding, in a statement released Friday.

Japan has seen heavy rain of unprecedented levels in parts of the country in recent years, with floods and landsides sometimes generating casualties.

-AFP