Chiba downpour death toll rises to 9 with nearly 500 evacuated

CHIBA – The death toll from this week’s record rain in Chiba Prefecture has risen to nine, while one man is still missing, the prefectural government’s disaster response team said Saturday.

In the prefecture, a total of 463 people were still staying at 92 evacuation shelters as of 1 p.m., according to the prefectural headquarters.

On the same day, a man in his 70s was found in an irrigation canal in the city of Isumi and later confirmed dead.

The nine victims also include a woman in her 70s who was found inside a vehicle submerged up to its roof in the city of Kashiwa and a man in his 40s who was trapped in a flooded car in an underpass in the city of Chiba.

According to the Chiba city fire department, a man went missing after telling another man, in his 70s, who was calling for help from the roof of a flooded car that he would return with rescue equipment.

It has also been confirmed that the downpour left one house fully destroyed, 23 houses half-destroyed, and 49 others partially damaged, while flooding 597 houses above the floor and 490 houses below the floor.

The number of affected houses could increase further as surveys have not progressed in the severely-hit cities of Ichihara and Oamishirasato.

Additionally, 215 flooded vehicles were found abandoned on prefecture-managed roads, and 132 of them have been removed.