Japan landslide: Death toll rises to 45 in Hiroshima
23 Aug BBC
Heavy rain has hampered rescue operations in Japan's Hiroshima
prefecture where a landslide killed at least 45 people.
The number of people missing has risen to 51 after police
cross-checked information with fire crews, officials quoted by Kyodo
news agency say.
About 3,000 rescue personnel are in the area but heavy rain has
suspended search operations.Torrential rains have led to the evacuation
of up to 100,000 people.On Friday afternoon all searches in the area
were called off when the shape of nearby hillsides appeared to change,
raising fears that more landslips could be on the way.
Operations in (two districts) were halted as hills there were
becoming misshapen,” a Hiroshima police spokesman is quoted as saying by
the AFP news agency.The landslides happened after the equivalent of a
month's rain fell in the 24 hours up to Wednesday morning, Japan's
weather agency said.
Dozens of homes in a residential area close to a mountain on the
outskirts of Hiroshima were buried.The BBC's Rupert Wingfield-Hayes says
with the leap in the death toll, the eventual number of victims could be
close to 100.Among those killed was one 53-year old rescue worker who
died when a second landslide struck after he had already pulled several
people to safety.Reports said he was killed while holding a toddler he
was trying to rescue. A father was handing his small son to the rescue
worker only to see both engulfed as a fresh mudslide swept down the
mountain.
“There was a really strange smell, a very raw, earthy smell. When we
opened a window to see what was going on, the entire hillside just came
down, with a crackling noise, a thundering noise,” Reuters news agency
quotes one woman who survived as telling local television.She and her
husband fled moments before mud gushed through their house, leaving
boulders where they had been sleeping, Reuters says.
Correspondents add that a number of children are thought to have
perished in the disaster.Much of central and southern Japan is
mountainous, with many homes nestled into steep slopes.Last year, a
typhoon triggered landslides on Izu Oshima island, south of Tokyo, that
left 35 people dead.
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