In the department of Yamagata, a railway bridge and a road bridge were swept away by the floods.
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Between threats of precipitation and hot weather, time remained strongly disrupted on Saturday August 6, on a good part of Japan, after a week of devastating rains in many regions of the country. They left at least two dead in the departments of Iwate and Yamagata (North) and considerable damage on infrastructure, sometimes forcing the authorities to mobilize the Japanese forces of self -defense. A railway bridge and a road bridge were swept away by the floods in the department of Yamagata. “We strive to assess the extent of the damage and we do our best to answer them,” said the Minister of the Territory and Transport, Tetsuo Saito on Friday August 5. In the northeast, region most affected by precipitation, the Ministry of the Environment called for caution for this Saturday, temperatures threatening to exceed 30 ° C and cause heat strokes among residents and volunteers mobilized to clean the victims areas by the rain.
At the same time, the Japanese Meteorological Agency (JMA) maintained forecasts of heavy rain in several departments of the center and west of the archipelago. It feared up to 150 millimeters of precipitation in the Tokai region (center, around Nagoya), and maintained its alert level to 3 – on a scale ranging from 1 to 5 – in certain areas of the Departments of Hyogo and de Mie (center). This level calls for the evacuation of the elderly and reduced mobility.
Thirty-seven departments were also subject to advice on prudence (level 2) in the face of the risk of heavy rain or thunderstorms. Train trains at high speed Shinkansen remained disturbed on the northeast lines.
ever more considerable damage
The situation, however, appears less extreme than the past days, marked by precipitation records. A rainy front combined with a system of low pressures is the source of floods of 52 rivers in nine departments in three days. The authorities also counted 22 landslides. The JMA recorded 405.5 millimeters of precipitation in twenty-four hours until Friday morning in Minamiechizen, in the department of Fukui (center). This level is 2.2 times higher than the average for the entire month of August. Certain parts of the departments of Shiga and Shimane (west) also recorded record time precipitation.
The heavy rains are not exceptional in Japan, especially in summer, but they are intensifying, causing ever more considerable damage. In 2018, floods and landslides killed more than 200 people in western Japan. In 2021, heavy rains were at the origin of a devastating landslide in the seaside resort of Atami (center), which killed 27 people.
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