Heavy rain causes deadly flooding near Tokyo and strands travellers
At least four people are dead and one more is missing after record-breaking rainfall pounded cities east of Tokyo overnight, flooding roads and dozens of homes, stranding thousands of people and causing power outages.
The Japan Meteorological Agency downgraded its most severe warning for heavy rain in more than a dozen municipalities in Chiba prefecture as rain subsided on Friday morning, but more rain was forecast for later in the day.
Photos and television footage showed widespread damage, with homes, cars and parts of railway tracks flooded with muddy water.
The Ground Self-Defence Force said it dispatched buses to pick up about 4,000 stranded people who stayed overnight at the Soga train station, a local route that also serves Tokyo Disney. The theme park did not report any damage.
Thousands more people were stuck overnight at the Narita airport serving the Tokyo region, with trains out of the area stopped.
Services partially resumed Friday morning with delays, while flights in and out of Narita were operating normally on Friday, with many people returning home at the end of Japan’s Bon Buddhist holiday week.
Hundreds of people took shelter overnight at the Chiba prefectural government building.
The prefecture said four people were found dead and another person was missing. The victims included a man found floating on a flooded road in Ichikawa city and a woman who had been stuck in a flooded car in Sakura city.
Another person pulled from a flooded car in Kashiwa city was pronounced dead.
More than 80 homes were flooded in the prefecture and nearly 230,000 residents across the prefecture were advised to take shelter, Chiba officials said.
The torrential rain and flooding also knocked out power to about 23,000 homes Friday morning, down from 68,000 earlier, according to the TEPCO Power Grid.
Record-breaking rainfall of 4.5in fell in just one hour in Chiba City and 3.8in fell in one hour in Sakura, which was also a record.
JMA forecast official Takuya Hosomi told a televised emergency news conference that unprecedented levels of rainfall were recorded.
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