More than one million residents on Japan's Kyushu island have been ordered to evacuate as heavy rains trigger landslides and floods. Authorities in Kagoshima and Miyazaki prefectures urged residents to move to safety immediately after an elderly woman died when a mudslide struck her home in Kagoshima city.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe called on residents to 'take steps to protect their lives'. Kagoshima prefecture has requested assistance from Japan's self-defence forces, according to Governor Satoshi Mitazono. The entire populations of Kagoshima city, Kirishima and Aira were ordered to leave, while another 930,000 people in southern Kyushu were advised to move.
However, by 1600 local time (0700 GMT), fewer than 4,000 people had actually evacuated, according to the Fire and Disaster Management Agency. Weather officials reported that 1,000mm (39in) of rain has fallen since Friday, with the Meteorological Agency forecasting continued downpours into next week. An additional 350mm is expected in southern Kyushu and 300mm in the north by Thursday morning, with hourly rates exceeding 80mm in some areas.
The agency warned that parts of Kyushu could receive a month's worth of rainfall in just 24 hours. The island of Shikoku is also forecast to get up to 250mm of rain, and the rainy front is expected to linger over the Japanese archipelago until Saturday.
Last July, about 200 people died in western Japan in the country's worst flooding disaster in decades, with the highest death toll from rainfall since 1982. Around two million people were evacuated and over 70,000 emergency workers deployed during that disaster.
