2023-06-02 10:40:15
Hundreds of thousands of residents in Japan were affected Friday by evacuation orders linked to the passage of tropical storm Mawar, which caused torrential rains especially in the center and west of the country.
The eye of the cyclone, previously classified as a typhoon when it hit the US island of Guam in late May, was in the Pacific Ocean southwest of Japan on Friday.
Evacuation instructions – not mandatory – were notably issued on Friday for more than 410,000 people in Toyota City, in the department of Aichi (center).
In this same department, 130,000 inhabitants in Toyohashi were affected by calls to evacuate accompanied by the maximum level of alert, according to the public television channel NHK.
In Wakayama Prefecture (west), several streams overflowed.
“We urge residents (in affected areas, editor’s note) to be extremely vigilant once morest the risk of landslides, floods and flooding rivers,” government spokesman Hirokazu Matsuno told reporters.
“Extremely heavy rainfall with thunderstorms is expected over a large part of Japan, from west to east, over the next three days,” he said.
High-speed train (shinkansen) traffic was suspended between Tokyo and Osaka, the JR Central railway company said on its website.
And more than 260 flights had been canceled Friday in the country, according to a score of the NHK in the middle of the followingnoon.
Global warming is intensifying the risk of heavy rains in Japan, with warm air masses carrying more steam, scientists say.
In July 2021, heavy rains caused a huge mudslide in the seaside resort of Atami (southwest of Tokyo) which left 27 dead.
Extensive flooding in Kyushu (southwest Japan) claimed more than 80 lives in 2020, and two years earlier the archipelago had experienced its worst flooding in decades, during which more than 200 people were killed. in the west of the country.
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