The number of people missing in Japan in the wake of typhoon Lionrock rose to 21 after the storm left at least 11 dead and caused severe flooding due to torrential rain.
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The typhoon, the 10th of the season and the first to hit Tohoku’s Pacific coastline, made landfall Tuesday in “Ofunato”, “Iwate” Prefecture. Water levels eventually reached 6.6m.
Flooding appeared to be the main cause of the fatalities.
Nine of the victims were elderly people from this nursing home.
Surging flood waters and mud brought by a powerful tropical storm killed nine people in an elderly care home in northern Japan, after the third storm in two weeks ripped through the country.
Broadcaster NHK showed a rescue helicopter landing on the nursing facility’s roof as tree trunks and mud lay piled up around the building.
Authorities, however, had better luck at another care facility adjacent to the stricken one after airlifting some 70 to 80 people to safety, a local social welfare council said.
The body of a man was also found near a river in Iwaizumi and a dead woman was found in Kuji city, police said. That, however, was not as strong as an evacuation warning, according to another prefecture official.
In Hokkaido, the Sorachigawa river overflowed its banks at two locations, including one at a bridge in Minami-Furano’s Ikutora district, temporarily stranding more than 300 people.
Authorities in the town of Minamifurano reported hundreds of people trapped in houses and shelters by flooding from the Sorachi river, the agency said.
Iwaizumi received a downpour of 203.5 millimetres in a day, which exceeded the average rainfall for the month of August, according to the Japan Meteorological Agency.
More than 100 domestic flights and over 50 shinkansen services were canceled Tuesday before the typhoon blew its way into the Sea of Japan the same evening.
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Iwate prefecture, the hardest-hit by the typhoon, is one of the areas still rebuilding from the March 2011 tsunami and natural disaster, which left more than 18,000 people dead along Japan’s northeastern coast.
