Record-breaking rainfall that pounded cities east of Tokyo overnight flooded roads and dozens of homes, stranded thousands of people, caused power outages, and left at least six people dead. The Japan Meteorological Agency downgraded its most severe warning for heavy rain in more than a dozen municipalities in Chiba prefecture as rain subsided Friday morning but forecast more rain later in the day. Photos and television footage showed widespread damage after daylight, with homes, cars, and parts of railway tracks flooded with muddy water, the AP reports. According to Japanese media, the six people killed included a woman who was trapped in a submerged car, the BBC reports.
The Ground Self-Defense 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 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.
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. Some 4.5 inches of rain fell in just one hour in Chiba City. The volume of rain was the highest ever recorded in Japan, the BBC reports.
“This case was an extremely unusual situation, even by Japan’s historical weather standards,” Chiba Governor Toshihito Kumagai said Friday morning. “I have responded to many disasters in the past, but I have never experienced a case like this.”