Level 5 Heavy Rain Warnings Issued Temporarily for Toyama, Ishikawa

Tokyo, Aug. 27 (Jiji Press)–The Japan Meteorological Agency temporarily issued Level 5 heavy rain emergency warnings to some municipalities in the central prefectures of Toyama and Ishikawa on Thursday. The Noto Peninsula area in central Japan started to have heavy rain early Thursday. The emergency warnings were issued at 6:20 a.m. for the city of Himi in Toyama and the city of Hakui and the towns of Shika, Hodatsushimizu and Nakanoto in Ishikawa. Level 5 is the highest on the agency’s disaster alert scale. Linear precipitation zones developed intermittently in the two neighboring prefectures facing the Sea of Japan. The five municipalities issued the highest Level 5 emergency evacuation warnings, urging residents to immediately take measures to protect their lives. The emergency heavy rain warnings were downgraded to lower warnings at 4:20 p.m. As the region may have heavy rain again later in the day to Friday, however, a high level of caution is still required for flooding of low-lying areas, overflowing of rivers and landslides, the agency said. Both the Toyama and Ishikawa prefectural governments set up disaster response headquarters Thursday. Ten rivers in Toyama overflowed, while power outages hit some 1,100 households in Himi. Thirty-eight households in Himi were affected by water outages. About 80 homes were inundated in Ishikawa, and 266 households in three Ishikawa municipalities were isolated due to landslides. No casualties have been confirmed, according to authorities. Rain clouds developed more than expected as warm humid air from the south flowed into a front stretching over the northern part of the Noto Peninsula from around a high-pressure system on the Pacific side, Takuya Hosomi, director of the meteorological agency’s forecast division, said at a press conference Thursday morning. “It is necessary to ensure safety as disasters are highly likely to have occurred already,” he added. Kazuhito Shimamoto, director of the land ministry’s River Environment Division, warned against entering flooded areas, referring to cases in which people died in flooded vehicles during the torrential rain that struck Chiba Prefecture, eastern Japan, on Aug. 13. Rainfall in the 24 hours until 5 p.m. Thursday reached 361.5 millimeters in Himi, 342.5 millimeters in Hakui and 264.5 millimeters in Hodatsushimizu, all hitting record highs. In the 24 hours until 6 p.m. Friday, rainfall is forecast to total up to 180 millimeters in Toyama, up to 150 millimeters in Niigata Prefecture, next to Toyama, and Ishikawa, and up to 120 millimeters in Fukui Prefecture, an Ishikawa neighbor. END [Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]