Floods, landslides hit central Japan months after major quake

WAJIMA, Japan: Floods and landslides killed one person and left at least 11 missing in central Japan, with recovery teams at work on Sunday in a remote peninsula already devastated by a major earthquake this year.

“Unprecedented” heavy rains that lashed the area from Saturday began to subside, leaving muddy scenes of destruction as the national weather agency urged people to stay vigilant for loose ground and other dangers.

In the city of Wajima, splintered branches and a huge uprooted tree piled up at a bridge over a river whose raging brown waters almost reached ground level.

People were seen wading into the mud to try to dig out half-buried cars, while elsewhere flood waters inundated emergency housing built for those who had lost their homes in the New Year´s Day earthquake that killed at least 318 people.

Akemi Yamashita, a 54-year-old resident, told AFP she had been driving on Saturday when “within only 30 minutes or so, water gushed into the street and quickly rose to half the height of my car”.

“I was talking to other residents of Wajima yesterday, and they said, ´it´s so heart-breaking to live in this city´. I got teary when I heard that,” she said, describing the earthquake and floods as “like something from a movie”. Eight temporary housing complexes were affected in Wajima and Suzu, two of the cities on the Noto Peninsula ravaged by the magnitude-7.5 quake, which toppled buildings, triggered tsunami waves and sparked a major fire.