Death Toll from Noto Peninsula Heavy Rain Rises to 7
Kanazawa, Ishikawa Pref., Sept. 23 (Jiji Press)--The death toll from the recent torrential rain that hit the northern part of the Noto Peninsula in Ishikawa Prefecture, central Japan, has risen to seven, authorities said Monday.
A man who was rescued in the Machino district in the city of Wajima was newly confirmed to have died, according to the Ishikawa prefectural police department and other sources.
Of the seven deaths in the prefecture, six were in Wajima and one in the city of Suzu.
On Monday, operations to search for those who went missing due to river flooding after the heavy rain continued in the northern part of the peninsula, which was hit hard by a powerful earthquake in January. A total of about 400 people, including firefighters, police officers and Self-Defense Forces troops, took part in the operations.
In Wajima on Sunday, an elderly man was found dead in the Tsukada River. In the city's Machino district, the bodies of two elderly women were discovered. Two people were found in a state of cardiopulmonary arrest near a tunnel on a national road in Wajima and were later confirmed dead.
The Ishikawa police department and others are working to identify the dead people.
The Ishikawa prefectural government said that two people--one in Suzu and the other in the town of Noto--remain unaccounted for.
Local authorities have been unable to contact several people, including a 14-year-old junior high school girl, after the Tsukada River flooded in Wajima. Firefighters and others searched the area intensively on Monday, but were unable to find any of them. "Sediment flowed into wider areas than expected," a police source said.
As of 3 p.m. Monday, 56 communities had been isolated. Restoration work has run into difficulties due to reasons such as roads being closed to traffic because of landslides.
At a meeting of the Ishikawa prefectural government's disaster response headquarters, Wajima Mayor Shigeru Sakaguchi asked the prefecture for group evacuation of about 400 residents of the isolated Shitsura district and other areas of the city.
Twenty-three rivers have overflowed in the Noto Peninsula since the Japan Meteorological Agency issued a heavy rain emergency warning to the northern part of the Noto Peninsula on Saturday.
Several temporary housing complexes built for people affected by the 7.6-magnitude Noto Peninsula earthquake that struck Jan. 1 were flooded above floor level.
As of 3 p.m. Monday, 632 people, mainly from Wajima, had been evacuated, while about 3,700 households had been without electricity supply and some 5,000 households without running water.
Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi said Monday that the central government will send three officials, including a Cabinet Office official in charge of disaster response, to areas affected by the rain disaster at the request of Ishikawa Governor Hiroshi Hase.
"We will deal with the situation by fully understanding the needs of the afflicted areas in cooperation with relevant local governments, while taking into account that the areas are still recovering from the Noto Peninsula earthquake," the top government spokesman told reporters at the prime minister's office in Tokyo.
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