ABOUT 400,000 PEOPLE were ordered or advised to leave their homes in southwest Japan today.
AFP reports that heavy rain pounded four prefectures in Kyushu for a third day, leaving 29 dead or missing.
A video filmed by BBC news shows muddy rushing water engulfing buildings and homes. Debris is swept along in the torrent.
Fukuoka prefecture spokesman Hiroaki Aoki told AFP by telephone:
Two men were rescued from landslides but their conditions were not immediately available. One woman was still trapped. I don’t remember any flooding which stretched over such a wide area in our prefecture.
The death toll remained at 20 overnight, with nine people reported missing. Two people were listed as missing today after a 30-year-old man fell into a swelling river in his car in Oita and a 83-year-old woman was buried in a landslide in Fukuoka.
TIME reported that self-defence soldiers were deployed to search for those said to be missing after landslides.
- Additional reporting by © AFP, 2012
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