(Tokyo) The Japanese Meteorological Agency (JMA) urged residents of a southwest city on Friday to evacuate following exceptional rains, while warning risks of landslides and floods, even after lowering its maximum rain alert.
Images broadcast by the NHK television channel have shown a power of booming water, overflowing banks and flooding houses in the Kagoshima region, located in the far southwest of the archipelago.
Local media reported that the city of Kirishima, in the department of Kagoshima, recorded record precipitation of 500 mm in 24 hours to 5 a.m. (4 p.m. Eastern time, Thursday), twice the average rainfall for the whole month of August.
Kyodo photo, supplied by Reuters
Firefighters search a collapsed house after heavy rains in Aira, Japan, August 8, 2025.
Friday afternoon, the JMA lowered its maximum alert to the heavy rains at level 4, on a scale of 5. More than 122,000 inhabitants of Kirishima were still always invited to evacuate.
The Department of Kagoshima “sees torrential rains fall as it has never known,” said a JMA official at a morning press conference.
“Lives are in danger … We ask you to put yourself in safety by going to buildings located enough far from streams or cliffs, or in buildings less conducive to floods,” he said.
Particularly exposed, because located between sea and mountain, the city of Kirishima had asked residents very early on to evacuate or make alternative arrangements after the “special” warning of the JMA – the highest level on its five -level rating system.
“The rivers swell, posing a risk of flooding, or floods may already have taken place above the dikes,” said the city on its website.
A woman in her thirties is missing while two other people who were supposed to live in the same house were rescued from the rubble of their collapsed home after a landslide in Aira, another city in the department of Kagoshima, said a local firefighters in AFP.
According to the NHK, quoting local anonymous officials, several other houses collapsed in the region while government spokesperson Yoshimasa Hayashi said many cases of floods.
Flights to Kagoshima regional airport were canceled due to the rain.
These torrential rains follow an episode of intense heat in many regions of the archipelago, including an absolute temperature record in the country on Tuesday (41.8 ° C in the large suburbs of Tokyo).
