People are rescued by Japan Self-Defense Forces following floods in Takeo, Saga prefecture, southwestern Japan, 28 August 2019. The Japan Meteorological Agency issued emergency heavy rain warnings in the northern part of Kyushu, with maximum level of landslides and flooding. EPA-EFE/JIJI PRESS
More than a million more people were advised to leave their homes after the country’s weather agency raised the alert to its highest level for parts of northern Kyushu.Officials confirmed two deaths, one in western Saga prefecture where a man was found in a car that had been swept away. A second man died in Fukuoka as he tried to escape from a car trapped in rising floodwaters.
Evacuation orders and advisories issued by local authorities are not mandatory, although officials urge residents to heed them. “We are seeing unprecedented levels of heavy rains in cities where we issued special warnings,” a spokesperson for the Japan Meteorological Agency told reporters. In Saga, a mother wearing a life vest in a rescue boat told public broadcaster NHK she had been saved from the floodwaters.
Television footage showed rivers swollen by the rain and parked cars sitting in muddy brown water nearly up to the vehicles’ roofs.At a station in Saga, stranded passengers sat on benches with water around their ankles.