Posted on 07/21/2003 5:01:05 PM PDT by GATOR NAVY
Tuesday, July 22, 2003 at 07:13 JST FUKUOKA — The death toll from Sunday's mudslides and flooding on the main southwestern island of Kyushu rose to 14 on Monday as rescue workers continued searching for eight missing people, police said.
The Japan Meteorological Agency, meanwhile, warned of heavy rains Monday over a wide swath of Japan stretching from the southern Kyushu region to the northeastern Tohoku region.
The Kumamoto prefectural government said agriculture, forestry and fisheries-related damage is estimated to total about 726 million yen.
The local government and the central government decided to apply the Disaster Relief Law to the prefecture and give compensation to the local agriculture, forest and fisheries industries. The local and the central governments will share the compensation cost.
Eight people are still missing in the city of Minamata, Kumamoto Prefecture, and Nagasaki Prefecture. The police, meanwhile, identified Monday evening the recovered body of a woman as that of Minako Yoshigai, 47, from the Hogawachi district in Minamata.
They also identified two men's bodies found in the Minamata River on Monday afternoon as those of Yasunari Yoshigai, 37, and Kazuhiro Yoshigai, 44.
Also in Minamata, the police found the bodies of Harumi Hayashida, 45, and 10-year-old Shinji Yoshigai in rivers.
Hayashida is one of a four-member family and Shinji Yoshigai one of a three-member family who went missing in Minamata's Hogawauchi district after a mudslide just before 5 a.m. Sunday caused a 300-meter-wide stretch of mountain slope to fall and engulf a dozen homes.
Eiko Yoshigai, 64, her daughter-in-law Naoko, 36, and Tatsue Yoshigai, 75, were also killed in the mudslide.
Also found dead Monday morning were the members of a missing family in Minamata's Fukagawa district — Natsu Fukuda, 75, her 42-year-old son, Yoshihiko, his wife Chiyoko, 36, and their son Ryota, 3.
The body of Tatsue Yoshigai was found 30 kilometers away in Yatsushiro Sea off Kawaura in the same prefecture, and a Maritime Self-Defense Force destroyer and Japan Coast Guard helicopters searched the ocean in case missing people have been swept out to sea, the officials said.
In Kagoshima Prefecture, the bodies of Yoshiharu Shinohara, a 68-year-old farmer, and his wife Chisako, 66, were found in the town of Hishikari.
In Nagasaki Prefecture, Taeko Ogawa, 62, went missing after a flood washed her car away in the town of Kinkai.
Around 700 police, firefighters and Ground Self-Defense Forces rescuers resumed their search operations early Monday for the missing, centering on the two hardest-hit Minamata districts of Fukagawa and Hogawauchi, local officials said.
The meteorological agency forecast rainfall of up to 150 millimeters in Kyushu in the 24 hours up until Tuesday morning, 100 mm in the Tohoku and Chugoku regions, and 50-100 mm in the Kanto-Koshinetsu, Hokuriku, Kinki, Tokai and Shikoku regions.
According to the agency, atmospheric air conditions are unstable over a wide area of eastern and western Japan due to the inflow of humid air into a seasonal rain front hovering over the Hokuriku region to the Tsushima Strait.
The agency also warned citizens to beware of the dangers posed by landslides, rising river levels and flooding. (Kyodo News)
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