Deadly impacts of Typhoon Dujuan highlight toll of repeated rain disasters

Landslides, major flooding and other damage in the Kanto region caused by Typhoon Dujuan earlier this week have left local residents struggling to deal with the aftermath — some for the second time in weeks after heavy rain caused flooding in August.

At least 10 people have died in Chiba and Kanagawa prefectures after the typhoon ravaged the area from late Sunday through Tuesday morning, many in landslides that engulfed houses. One man was found dead after he became trapped in an inundated car.

A levee at Lake Inba in northeastern Chiba Prefecture was breached in four places, causing houses and stores to be inundated. The water level at the lake reached a record 5.04 meters at one point on Tuesday morning, far higher than its maximum safe level of 4.25 m.

Some 17,000 houses were still without electricity as of noon Thursday.

About 560 houses have been flooded in the prefecture. In the city of Sakura, Kazuyoshi Sugo, who also experienced flooding due to heavy rain last month, found the ground floor of his home filled with muddy floodwater.

“It was just after I was cleaning things up” from last month, said Sugo, 59, as he swept away water and mud that had collected in the entrance area. “There’s no point in dwelling on it.”

At an izakaya (Japanese tavern), where floodwater had reached as high as waist level, three regular customers were helping to carry bottles of alcohol and food packages out of the building on Wednesday.

“It could have been better if we had used sandbags to stop the water beforehand,” said one of the customers.

Mud from a landslide fills a house's living room Wednesday in Miura, Kanagawa Prefecture, after Typhoon Dujuan caused heavy rain in the area. | JIJI

At Tani Fish Farm in the city of Narita, about 100,000 koi carp either died in muddy water or swam out of the premises during the floods. This, along with damage to machinery, caused losses of about ¥1 billion ($6.3 million), Kansai Television reported Wednesday.

The facility is part of a recreational park that also houses a putter golf course, a fishing pond and a restaurant, all of which were inundated.

“We can’t do anything until the floodwater recedes,” Kenji Tani, CEO of the fish farm, told the broadcaster.

Typhoon Dujuan came closest to the Tokyo metropolitan area on Monday and caused heavy rain in the region during the Silver Week holidays.

Train services were suspended and many events were cancelled. Kamogawa Seaworld, an aquarium in Chiba, and Ueno Zoo in Tokyo were among the many facilities that closed Monday due to the typhoon.

According to a survey by private forecaster Weathernews, 60.8% of respondents in Kanto said they had to change their plans due to the storm.