This aerial photo shows a destroyed railway bridge in Hita, Oita prefecture, southwestern Japan Thursday, July 6, 2017. (Nozomu Endo/Kyodo News via AP)
Tokyo: Troops were working Thursday to rescue families left stranded by flooding in southern Japan. At least two people were reported dead and more than a dozen others were missing or unaccounted for in flooding that wrecked homes, roads and rice terraces.
Heavy rain warnings were in effect for much of the southern main island of Kyushu after Typhoon Nanmadol swept across Japan earlier in the week.
Authorities in Fukuoka, in Kyushu, said four people suffered slight injuries. Hideki Tanaka, a Fukuoka prefectural disaster management official, said there were at least two unconfirmed reports of deaths. He said six others were missing and feared dead after they were swept by floodwater or buried underneath mudslides.
The national broadcaster NHK reported one man had died in neighbouring Oita prefecture, but details were not immediately available.
On Wednesday, a 93-year-old man was found dead on a river bank in Hiroshima, in western Japan, most likely after having been swept away by flooding, police said. Hiroshima is on the main island of Honshu.
In one of the worst-hit towns, Asakura in Fukuoka, one man managed a narrow escape when a landslide crushed his home on a steep mountain slope, NHK said.
Television footage showed rice fields and homes flooded after a river swollen by the rains overflowed its banks, dragging vehicles into the riverbed and destroying dozens of buildings as well as roads and bridges. Soldiers waded gingerly through floodwaters, carrying one elderly man to safety, and they were evacuating families using inflatable boats.
Many broken trees washed down from the mountains and were floating in flooded fields or blocking roads. Homes were without electricity, trains were suspended and parts of highways closed. Classes at dozens of schools, including those used as shelters, were cancelled Thursday.
Rivers also flooded in nearby Oita, Ryutaro Fukui, a crisis management official in the city of Hita, told public broadcaster NHK.
Nearly 600,000 people were ordered or advised to evacuate in Fukuoka, but only a fraction of them did, in part because the heavy rain worsened during the night. Only about 1,800 people had sought refuge in schools and other public facilities as of early Thursday, according to the prefecture's disaster management website. In Oita, more than 270,000 people were subject for evacuation.
Japan's Meteorological Agency said Fukuoka and Oita were experiencing unprecedented amounts of rain.